Telematics in the heavy-duty trucking industry is creating large amounts of data, which will increase as trucks become more technologically advanced with sensors being added to seemingly every component on the vehicle. All this data can be used to provide predictive maintenance information for fleets to decrease their trucks’ downtimes.
However, the key isn’t necessarily more data. It’s clean, optimized data that provides actionable information for aftermarket distributors, suppliers and fleets.
“The very business model of commercial vehicles has changed fundamentally. In 2022, the problem to solve is what the truck can do for me,” in the data it provides, said Sandeep Kar, Noregon chief strategy officer, during a session, “Paving the Way: How the Heavy-Duty Aftermarket Can Profit from Telematics and Predictive Maintenance,” held last week at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week 2022 in Grapevine, Texas.
If a fault light comes on in a truck in transit, “technology exists today to guide that vehicle to a service and maintenance location. That service and maintenance location now knows this vehicle is coming in with this part or service requirement, which reduces dwell time,” Kar said. “This is where the aftermarket has a huge advantage over the OES channel. If we can get it right, we can steal business away from the OES channel and we can reduce dwell time and get the driver back on the road. There are some mission-critical benefits the aftermarket can provide fleets and monetize that opportunity. That’s the future.”
Ben Johnson, director, product management, Mitchell 1, said if the vehicle is transmitting any data, it can go to a fleet management system which can evaluate the data and the fleet manager can run that data through a service that identifies the fault code.
“We know what generally causes this code and we know the severity of that code so now the first decision is whether the truck still safe to drive. Many times, they are [safe to drive] and you can direct them to finish their payload and then we’ll schedule an appointment to have them in. If that’s not the case, you have to make a decision based on what the data is telling you. Is it such a problem that is going to take that truck down for an extended amount of time? If so, you might want to start logistically thinking about another tractor to meet this payload to make sure the payload gets to where it needs to,” Johnson said.
He said there are a number of good parts distributors in the heavy-duty industry, but out of the 30-some electronic parts catalog interfaces Mitchell 1 has, very few of them have a robust selection of heavy-duty parts in them, which means there are phone calls to be made to find the people who can get the parts.
