THE GRADUAL VIRTUALIZATION
BY LOUIS BIRON
THE
TRUCKING
BACK
OFFICE
W
hen I joined the world of transportation 19 years ago working for
Brink's in New York City, it was a world of fax machines and paper,
lots and lots of paper. Actually, there was paper everywhere
in duplicates. Today, we live in a paperless world (unless you
are still using one of the old tech TMS) . The difference is
startling and may not be so evident if you only recently joined the workforce. Paper
forces you to have a physical office to go to where you shuffle it. I do not miss those
days. Let's track the paper trail and see what happened to it. There were a series of
innovations that led to the paperless trucking company but by themselves they were
not enough to tame the paper monster. We needed the glue to put it all together: the
modern TMS. Until you are fully done with paper you will be chained to a physical
office. After reading "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss, we came up with
many ways to integrate technology and our TMS to work from anywhere in the world.
18 IT MAGAZINE Vo l . 9 , N o . 5
