It can be a pat, potentially pedantic point within our industry and B2B companies more generally, but it is also a point worth repeating if only to reorient oneself to the reality of an increasingly digital world: society is more connected than ever before. Within seconds—and with the help of technology as complicated as it is powerful—a person can be connected with the smiling face of another person in another country halfway around the globe. Amazon offers its customers block-by-block updates on the status of their incoming deliveries. Google’s Maps service is accurate to within a few inches of your phone’s location. Perhaps most amazing is the simultaneity of our dependence on that connection and the seamlessness with which these processes work in the background. Modern life is made possible by tech operations we can’t see and, for the most part, spend almost no time thinking about. That is, until those systems stop working.
Telematics, broadly speaking, is one of those pieces of interconnected tech, quietly streamlining fleet operations by gathering intelligence, building a tangible history, and alerting both drivers and fleets to malfunctioning trailer systems. Beyond its humble beginnings as (mostly) a GPS device used to track equipment, telematics as an evolving segment of the Internet of Everything (IoE) is the key that opens the door to an even more efficient supply chain and an industry that is barreling towards automation. From monitoring the health of a piece of equipment in the form of ABS and TIS system integration, to geofencing and cargo security checks by way of open-door alerts, telematics vivifies an otherwise inert piece of equipment and gives it the brains to match its structural brawn. Smart trailers—goods mobility equipment that allow fleets to trade opacity for transparency—are here and it is telematics that will continue to drive us forward.
Learn more about Great Dane’s Telematics products FleetPulse.
