Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/573961
JACK ROBERTS is Executive Editor of Commercial Carrier Journal. E-mail jroberts@ccjmagazine.com or call (205) 248-1358. • Freight will change. As 3D printers become common, you'll move from hauling finished goods to hauling more raw materials. Moreover, as the rising global economy and connected world creates new middle classes in places such as Africa and India, the United States will emerge as the most important food-producing nation on the planet. Efficiently moving food products around the world will create incredible wealth both for the country as a whole and trucking as an industry. • You'll own your trucks, but the powertrains in them will belong to the OEM. You'll have a powertrain contract guarantee- ing you maximum uptime and efficiency with those drivetrains. All upgrades and any new tech- nology will be downloaded automatically or installed as they become available or are mandated by law. • Drivers' seats in trucks will double as medical monitoring devices. If a driver is tired, in a road-rage incident with an elevated pulse or having a medical emergency, a fleet will know in real time and be able to take control of the truck away from the driver and pull it off the road or route it to an alternate location (such as a hospital) in an emergency. The most important takeaway is that every single expert and futurist we've interviewed recently has been bullish on trucking's future. It is a vital industry that only will become more important for our sustained global economic growth over the next several decades. The challenges facing the industry will be enormous in the next few years. But the rewards will be as well. COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2015 25 WANT MORE EQUIPMENT NEWS? Scan the barcode to sign up for the CCJ Equipment Weekly e-mail newsletter or go to www.goo.gl/Ph9JK. Fleets are facing a new Internet- fueled global super-economy. S hell last month launched Shell Virtual Assistant, an interactive one-stop shop on the company's website where custom- ers and distributors in the United States and United Kingdom can ask common lubricant-related questions any time. After typing in a question via an online message window, avatars Emma and Ethan reply back with an appropriate answer within seconds. Shell Virtual Assistant also can make product recommendations based on cus- tomers' equipment by linking customers to Shell LubeMatch, which is available in 138 countries and 21 languages. Shell Virtual Assistant also complements Shell LubeAdvisor, which includes a Web platform, a technical helpdesk and local application experts for deeper technical support. – Jack Roberts B FGoodrich is recalling about 129,000 tires that were sold in North America, with 104,000 of those sold in the United States. The tires are found primarily on commercial light trucks, as well as full-sized heavy-duty vans, small RVs and some ¾- and one-ton pickup trucks, according to the company. The recall, which has been reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Admin- istration, includes eight specific commercial light truck tire sizes produced under the product names BFGoodrich Commercial T/A All-Season, BFGoodrich Commercial T/A All-Season 2 and BFGoodrich Rugged Terrain T/A. A limited number of these tires experi- enced a rapid loss of air pressure "due to a rupture of the sidewall in the bead area un- der severe usage conditions." BFGoodrich says this can result in a potential risk of loss of control or a crash. – CCJ staff Shell launches Virtual Assistant BFGoodrich recalls more than 100,000 tires in U.S.