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trailer world Issue Two 2014

Issue Two 2014 19 Telematics Jörg Meyer is a haulier from the old school. When the native of Olden- burg founded Jörg Meyer Transportservice GmbH (JMTS) in 1984, technical develop- ments such as the use of modern telematics systems were still pipe dreams. “Back then, I still used to use the distance tracer on the road map to measure distances,” remem- bers the 57 year old business administration graduate, thinking about how his company started out. Today, JMTS has a fleet of 30 trucks, employs 50 people and has always kept pace with technical development. For about five years now, Jörg Meyer has been using telematics systems in his entire fleet of trucks that is used for cold chain logistics, bulk transport and scheduled haulage – these systems are chiefly used for checking the telemetric data of his vehi- cles as well as for paperless order handling and tracking shipments. “In the past, each transport required a paper waybill and I had to phone the driver to ask whether the ship- ment had been collected and delivered,” ex- plains the haulier. Today, thanks to a trans- port management system (TMS) provided in his rented truck by the automobile ser- vice provider Werner Automobil-Dienste (WAD) from Weyhe near Bremen, he can check the loading and unloading process fully automatically. Destination address is received automatically in the truck’s navigation system A case study from cold chain logistics: A large deep-freeze logistics company in north- ern Germany is supposed to transport eight pallets of frozen beef in an 18-tonne truck to the warehouse of a supermarket chain. The scheduler allocates the order from the logis- tics system to a particular vehicle. The driver sees the order on the display of the data ac- quisition unit and confirms it at the push of a button, so the scheduler knows: the order has been received. In the warehouse, the driver takes a photo of the goods as a quality check, and on his scanner he also has a loading list and scans the barcode on the pallet so that the precise packaging item can be registered. The truck is then loaded at a bay in a tunnel with special temperature protection. The driver starts the transport and it is followed all the way by the telematics system. “Accepting the order means that the destination address is also transferred to the truck’s navigation sys- tem automatically,” explains Bernd Stiebe from the Sales department of the telematics manufacturer, idem telematics GmbH. During the transport, the haulier has a complete overview of what is happening: the position of the truck and trailer (even when unhitched from one another), speed, tyre pressure, driver’s times at the wheel as well as the ETA (estimated time of arrival) when the truck is expected to reach the supermar- ket warehouse. If geo-fencing (a kind of area monitoring in the vicinity of the destination) has been set up prior to departure, the cus- tomer will receive an SMS or e-mail via the telematics system once the truck has entered the defined vicinity of its destination. As a re- sult, a particular terminal can be made ready for unloading, for example. “The scheduler at the customer can decide which vehicle to un- load, when and where,” explains the haulier, Meyer, describing the increased level of or- ganisation made possible by telematics in the loading process. Faster invoicing thanks to telematics In the case of a refrigerated transport, the temperature of the goods is also trans- mitted even prior to arrival at the destina- tion. It is not allowed to exceed a value of -18 degrees Celsius, and is checked in real time throughout the entire transport by telematics. If there is an excessive devia- tion, an alarm message is sent to the Photos:YasminLühring Andreas Mede, head of vehicle rental (left) and Jörg Meyer, haulier, place their trust in telematics solutions from the BPW Group.

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