Technology news and briefs for the week of Oct. 16, 2022: 

Samsara expands in-cab coaching capabilities

San Francisco IoT company Samsara has released an evolved version of its existing in-cab coaching capabilities.

The company’s Proactive Driver Coaching solution takes a preventative approach to driver coaching to help drivers build safe habits in real time with In-Cab Nudges and mobile usage and no seatbelt detection.

Eurovia USA saw an 80% decrease in mobile usage events 30 days after turning on artificial intelligence in-cab alerts, and it saw a 76% decrease in safety events that detected drivers not wearing seatbelts after four months. Chalk Mountain Services has seen an 86% decrease in preventable accident costs and a 43% decrease in worker’s compensation costs using the Samsara solution.

“There were a few bad habits I didn’t know I had, and Samsara was able to point them out to me so I could fix them,” said Chalk Mountain driver Vanessa Veloz. “My priority is safety, and Samsara helps me get home safe to my family.”

The AI technology automatically detects risky driving behaviors and delivers real-time voice coaching to help drivers self-correct in the moment before a safety event is created and uploaded for manager-led coaching and before driver safety scores are impacted. This ultimately helps drivers improve unsafe driving habits and frees up time for safety managers.

Drivers can access safety insights directly within the Samsara Driver App, enabling them to compete with peers for potential rewards by building safe habits, which can help increase engagement and boost retention, the company said.

Tech company launches three-way texting platform for last-mile sector

A new communication platform has hit the last-mile, on-demand delivery market.

Riptide has launched its patent-pending three-way text messaging platform that connects customers, drivers and dispatchers in the same conversation to resolve issues more quickly, replacing support tickets and enabling delivery services to scale without adding more dispatchers.

Dispatchers typically have to work with customers and drivers separately, consuming time and expanding the possibility of deliveries going awry, which can harm a brand and their relationship with carriers as 84% of consumers won’t make a second purchase from a brand after one poor delivery experience, according to ParcelMonitor.

“With Riptide, our drivers and dispatchers respond together to 100% of customer delivery issues. Our resolution times went from 1 hour to less than 3 minutes, eliminating redeliveries and refunds,” said Gordon Harvey, founder and CEO of Canada-based DawgPack Delivery.

Riptide integrates with popular dispatch, routing and transportation management systems to automatically start conversations between dispatchers, drivers and consumers over SMS text. Dispatchers can see every interaction as it happens, engaging when needed, looping in retailers as necessary, and building the voice-of-the-customer data to understand and improve satisfaction.

CDL 1000 introduces new service offering

A logistics industry tech provider has launched a new service that aims to help its customers save money each week by avoiding severe late fees.

CDL 1000 is now offering Demurrage as a Service (DaaS) to help customers find truck drivers to transport containers quicker; obtain better visibility into free drivers, chassis and containers; pay demurrage fees that have racked up; forecast transportation costs more accurately; digitize operations to improve tracking abilities; and save on demurrage fees each week.

This is the beginning of CDL 1000’s $100 million-dollar commitment to digitize the drayage space aimed at transitioning away from ad hoc, manual practices to technology-based operations that bring more automation, accuracy and speed to supply chain operations.

The company recently committed to paying its customer’s demurrage fees if it was unable to pull any container and clear it out of a U.S. port or rail yard within 24 hours.

“The fees that shippers face at ports and rail yards are ridiculous. Logistics operations are already being severely hampered by the labor shortage that the entire industry is facing, which is leading to the long lead times of containers sitting idle. Demurrage fees aren’t doing anything to help. Rather, those costs are only passed along the supply chain until it ultimately hurts consumers’ pockets,” said CDL 1000 Founder and CEO Andrew Sobko. “When these containers sit idle for too long, the port and rail yard operators can charge the companies demurrage fees, which can cost upwards of a million dollars per week.”

CDL 1000 currently offers or will soon introduce the following solutions:

· Batch, which enables shippers to move upwards of 50 to 1,000 containers at a time, like Costco bulk buying

· Ruby, which allows shippers to book a truck through an AI-voice assistant, much like Amazon’s Alexa, by telling it their requirements and confirming price

Zonar enhances tracking system with additional location coverage

Smart mobility solutions provider Zonar has released its latest iteration of ZTrak, which helps fleets protect their cargo and assets from theft.

ZTrak, a rugged asset tracker designed for long-range connectivity in remote, harsh environments, is built with GPS, cellular and Wi-Fi technologies and can withstand temperatures from -40° F to 185° F as well as rain, sleet and snow.

As an upgrade from legacy versions, the latest compact iteration of ZTrak shrank from approximately the size of a brick to a golf ball.

It is integrated with the Zonar Ground Traffic Control fleet management platform that provides full visibility into each asset’s entire location path. The upgraded ZTrak tracks and records an asset’s location every five minutes, with an upload of six points every 30 minutes while the asset is on the move. If a burglary occurs, ZTrak has a new feature that remotely enables Theft Recovery Mode to provide pings once every minute to track a stolen asset in motion or at rest.

“This latest release is even more practical, allowing us to track more than just trailers,” said Justin Brands, fleet manager at Zonar customer Hot Line Construction. “We plan to use the new ZTrak release on high value tools, materials and even when shipping items just to have real-time updates on their location.”

The company was recently able to track moment-by-moment one of its $300,000 trucks with $100,000 worth of equipment on board, catching the thief.

The new ZTrak is equipped with Wi-Fi and cellular triangulation coverage to provide more comprehensive location resolution capabilities than legacy asset tracking systems, so if GPS and Wi-Fi connections fail, the ZTrak system can now use cell tower triangulation fallback to track assets for more accurate and consistent coverage.