The trend toward ‘smart’ trailers

The era of “dumb” semitrailers is coming to an end as more and more of the towed units are being equipped with devices to monitor vehicle systems and, more importantly to customers, the condition and whereabouts of their loads.

Shippers don’t care about the vehicle except that it should be reliable enough to safely carry and deliver their goods. If perishable foods are involved, customers want proof that specified temperatures are maintained throughout a run – something already mandated by federal law – and it takes special equipment to comply. Thus customers are pushing the adoption of “smart” technologies, say experts who are watching the trends.

Trailers can be outfitted with sensors to monitor tire pressure – one of the first functions adopted – plus wheel-end and tire temperature, brake wear, door openings, interior temperature and humidity, liftgate battery status, weights from on-board scales, and vehicle location, among other things, according to a report just issued by American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council. Information is acquired sent via on-board sensors and satellite, and sent through cellphone circuits. Some TMC members have formed study groups on smart trailers, and last year TMC surveyed leasing companies to get an idea of how advanced and widespread is the adoption of smart trailer equipment by fleets.

The survey showed that solar power is popular, with panels mounted on trailer roofs, noses and even underneath. They generate electricity to run tracking devices and, in reefer trailers, load conditions that are transmitted via telematics equipment to managers and customers. One common use is charging liftgate batteries and electric forklifts in trailers. Often a trailer’s data recorder is pinged by someone who wants to know before broadcasting its numbers, or the data may be sent on a schedule. Previous research found that about three years ago 23% of the estimated 6 million trailers in service had some type of tracking device. That is expected to rise to 43% by 2022, the survey report said. Among trailer tracking’s basic information is location – always good to know, even if it isn’t always accurate.

Of course, not everything possible with sensors aboard trailers is needed by everyone. For instance, flatbedders don’t care about rear doors because their trailers don’t have them. But van and reefer operators would want to know if the rear doors are opened or closed because if it’s anywhere but a loading dock the load could be in danger. Trailers have been known to be looted while moving slowly through big-city traffic while drivers are unaware. If a reefer’s doors are opened enroute, warm air could waft into the cold interior, compromising some of the goods. If a customer knows that, he’ll closely inspect the load when it arrives.

The survey and its findings look at fleet operations, but owner-operators need to be on board, too, says Robert Braswell, TMC’s executive director. For one thing, owner-operators’ tractors have to be compatible with the trailers they’re pulling so they can “communicate,” and the electronic interface between them must be the same. The current J560 standard, first used in 1951, includes the common seven-pin connector that’s still in use. Additional data capacity can be had by using a second cable or a more modern single cable with new communications standards. These might or might not be retrofittable to older tractors and trailers. If not, the owner-operator would have to acquire a more modern tractor, trailer or both. Then again, a wireless standard wouldn’t need a physical connection, and those, too, are being developed.

“The best connector is no connector,” Braswell said.

Making trailers smart and smarter is further complicated by the length of time they stay in service, the report observed. While tractors stay in long-haul service with big fleets from four to seven years – and often longer for owner-operators – trailers are run from 15 to 20 years and sometimes more. How much upgrading can be done to a trailer before it becomes uneconomical? Will the adoption of smart technology reduce trailer service lives? Fleet managers and accountants with sharp pencils will figure that out, and so will owner-operators who have a handle on their running costs and what they can or cannot afford to purchase.

Such deliberations apply not only to fleet-owned trailers and the contractors who pull them, but also to owner-operators’ trailers.

“His fleet might want information on load condition to satisfy customers,” says Paul Menig, a long-time Freightliner electrical and electronics engineer who now runs his own consultancy. “If a grocer demands tracking the temperature of his load from the time of departure to the time of delivery, what’s the owner-operator going to do? He’ll have to find a provider.”

But which one? A vehicle manufacturer might pick one and make it standard; the owner-operator’s fleet might specify a company to supply the equipment; or the owner-operator might pick one. That requires choices, which all truck operators would want to avoid until the market shakes out early entries and settles on a few with long-time staying power.

How equipment is adopted is shown by the so-called Hype Cycle, a theory formulated and named by the Gartner Inc., a global research and advisory organization based in Stamford, Conn. The cycle follows a new product as it goes from its introduction as a true “innovation” that triggers interest among early adopters, peaks amid excitement with “inflated expectations,” falls into a “trough of disillusionment” after failures develop, climbs a “slope of enlightenment” as the product becomes better known and understood, and finally reaches a “plateau of productivity” when it has become reliable and goes into general use.

The Hype Cycle maps out what most truckers know from experience: Wait until a product is debugged by the big fleets until buying it. So it is with equipment for smart trailers. LL