We all know about the "internet of things,"
but what about the "internet of trucks"?
There could be up to 4 million trucks in that network,
all capable of making smart decisions in real time.
That's a real economic engine
putting fleet operators on the road to growth.
Trucking is essential for everyday life.
Everything we see around us
has been delivered here
on the back of trucks.
The trucking companies that are really getting it right
are mastering the data that they collect.
These are 40-ton, high-tech machines.
When you have a connected fleet,
you can imagine all the data that they generate
with every quarter-mile they drive.
The mandate that all trucks be equipped
with electronic logging devices opened the data floodgates.
Now, strategic carriers are widening their scopes.
They track engine hours.
They track fuel consumption and vehicle maintenance.
Just shaving one minute off the time of delivery
can actually result in hundreds of millions of dollars
in additional profit.
That's just the beginning of what's possible
as trucks and forklifts and loading docks
start talking to each other.
But it takes processing speed to get there.
It's easy to get information about your fleet,
but the future really is around understanding
that edge-to-edge intelligence
that allows us to process data at the edge
and turn it into near real-time insights.
In the next 20 years,
we're going to see the majority of trucking on the road
working in these autonomous lanes.
That's when you're going to see
chains of trucks working together,
anticipating one another's next move.
That doesn't mean fewer workers.
It just means they work differently, they work smarter.
The drivers get that lower latency that 5G enables.
Trucks can go on autopilot and become mobile workstations
so drivers can plug into command central
and do other types of work.
With 5G, you're going to have trucks coming off
of autonomous lanes to dock at hubs
where humans could take the wheel for those
complicated last miles through cities or residential areas.
Carriers will need precise visibility into their fleet
to manage those handoffs.
Ultimately, we'll want the same thing
out of our internet of trucks
that we want out of the internet of things:
seamless interactions, having our needs anticipated,
and the ability to get even more mileage out of our days.