Kaleb Groce, director of operations for Royal Logistics, says his company uses data from its TMS to review lanes and improve profitability. (Mindy Long for Transport Topics)
PHOENIX — Fleets and industry vendors attending the Truckload Carrier Association’s Truckload 2025 conference said technology is helping increase efficiency and improve decision-making. The challenge can be knowing which technology to choose.
“I don’t have an R&D department and the people to do those things. I am learning from the vendors but also from the other carriers,” said Amber Edmondson, president and CEO of Trailiner Corp. “I’m not really sure how carriers who are not part of an association like this who are our size know what technology to select.”
Edmonson, who spoke during a small-carrier panel discussion, said the conference provides an opportunity to learn from fleets that have tested different technologies and see case studies from vendors.
“I can talk to them and ask them questions about it before I make a decision,” she said.
Trailiner is integrating its transportation management system with a tool that will automate various processes and make decisions based on load assignment and load acceptance.
Edmonson
“I do think that technology can help level the playing field from a small-carrier perspective. Large carriers have a lot more resources than we do, and technology kind of opens up some opportunities for us to do more with fewer people,” Edmonson said.
Royal Logistics uses data from its TMS to review lanes and improve profitability. During a session on the exhibit hall floor, Kaleb Groce, director of operations at Royal Logistics, said data has shown that lanes he thought were profitable were losing money.
“That’s really what opens your eyes,” he said. “Does that lane cost a driver to be on that load an extra day just because of traffic and all the other [things drivers] have to deal with?”
Groce looks at how long loads take from pickup to delivery as part of his data review.
“What I found is, if you’re only on a 650-mile lane, and it takes you two days to do that, that is not efficient. It’s not making you any money at all,” he said, adding that AI and data can help improve service. “If you get slowed by traffic, the ETA is going to change. If [a driver] runs into weather, the ETA is going to change, and that’s the kind of stuff that sets you apart from your customers.”
Groce also is using the TMS data to increase predictive maintenance, which is saving money. “It allows us to spend that cash on stuff that can actually make the company some money … instead of making sure that we have enough to cover the big tow bill,” he said.
Rocco Marrari says his company’s PredictiveView detects early signs of failure before fault codes appear. (Mindy Long for Transport Topics)
Rocco Marrari, vice president of sales for Pedigree Technologies, said unexpected failures cost billions of dollars each year. During the conference, Pedigree Technologies introduced a new AI-driven predictive maintenance solution for fleets, PredictiveView. The technology detects early signs of failure before fault codes appear and identifies high-risk vehicles by continuously monitoring and analyzing data from electronic logging and telematics devices.
“Our system has the ability to spot unusual patterns or issues from key components — engines, transmissions, brakes — that can lead to a breakdown while your truck is on the road,” Marrari said.
A common misconception is that AI and predictive maintenance are only accessible to large fleets.
“If you think about it, it’s going to be the smaller, midsized fleets that can really benefit from this,” Marrari said. “They have less staff. Their profit margins are a lot lower.”
Goldstein
Transflo has integrated AI into its new solution, Workflow AI, to eliminate manual data entry, streamline document processing and improve back-office automation. Danny Goldstein, vice president of solution engineering for Transflo, said AI works best with large amounts of data.
“Transflo is uniquely positioned to do this because of all the data points that we have coming in from our drivers,” he said. “The more we get, the better we get.”
Workflow AI can quickly review information to ensure everything is in place to invoice or flag any missing information.
“Even when you have noncompliant loads, it may just be one piece of one document in that load that is missing,” Goldstein explained, noting that Workflow AI can reduce the turnaround time for invoicing by 80%. “Even though somebody’s got to go review it, instead of taking 20 minutes to review the whole thing or 25 minutes, it’s a minute or two.”
Jim Higby, head of safety and compliance strategy for Motive, said “AI is the buzzword now.” He equated it to a tool, just like a hammer or a wrench.
“It will only be as effective as the person using it to get answers,” he said. “I don’t think we’re paying enough attention to the human aspect of AI, and, especially in the world of safety, it is something we need to pay attention to.”
Jared Whitson (left), director of safety for Bennett Family of Cos., and Jim Higby, head of safety and compliance strategy for Motive, share their insights during a panel discussion at Truckload 2025. (Mindy Long for Transport Topics)
AI can identify which videos capturing driver behavior should be reviewed, and then the human layer can evaluate the context of a situation to assess risk.
“Let’s say somebody gets flagged for running a stop sign, but that person ran the stop sign because there was an accident at the intersection and a police officer was waving them through,” Higby said.
Jared Whitson, director of safety for Bennett Family of Cos., is using AI-enabled safety technology from Motive to help the company reduce accidents and damages.
“Revenue growth is great, but if we turn around and pay it out at the end of the month in accident damages, we haven’t grown at all,” he said.
Whitson has created a group within the Motive platform to closely review new drivers who have been with the company for less than 10 months.
Bennett Family of Cos. ranks No. 39 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America.
Sean Ritchie, vice president of sales and solutions engineering for Solera, said fleets rushing into an AI-only solution without a human layer could increase their risk.
“In our rush to AI, we have to be very sober about the technology and its capabilities,” he said. “You can’t just assume because this tech is in the cab that your safety problems are solved. You have to keep a human engagement with it.”
Ritchie pointed out that while hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in ChatGPT and it is seen as the premier language learning model, as of the conference, it couldn’t correctly identify how many “r’s” are in the words raspberry or blackberry.
“It may seem silly, but the point I’m trying to illustrate is you have the most cutting-edge piece of AI in the world, and it still can’t tell me how to spell these fruits correctly,” Ritchie said. “Now, what if what we’re talking about is more important than the spelling of a fruit but making sure someone gets home safe at night.”
On top of using a technology that can accurately identify risk, Ritchie said fleets must take action on the risk they uncover and coach drivers.
“All video is discoverable,” he said, adding that a single nuclear verdict can put a trucking company out of business.
While AI is gaining a lot of attention, several other technologies were on display during the conference. BeyondTrucks released a new rules-based fuel card feature in its TMS to reduce the risk of unauthorized fuel purchases.
BeyondTrucks CEO Hans Galland’s company released a new fuel card feature that minimizes the risk of unauthorized purchases. (Mindy Long for Transport Topics)
“It allows a dispatcher to define logic on when the fuel card is activated or not activated,” said Hans Galland, CEO of BeyondTrucks.
The new features can automatically activate a driver fuel card subject to predefined triggers, such as when they’re hauling a load, and deactivate them when they’re not on assignment. It also can instantly generate and send money codes to make funds available to drivers directly through BeyondTrucks.
To help increase visibility for fleets and drivers, Trucker Path has added the DOT 511 Traffic Network to the live navigation features on the Trucker Path app, so drivers can see real-time footage of traffic congestion, live construction and crash information. Trucker Path CEO Chris Oliver said the information can help drivers see potential delays on their route.
Trucker Path has added the DOT 511 Traffic Network to the live navigation features on its app. (Trucker Path)
“They can compare ahead of time to either adjust their route — either change the route dramatically and get off the highway or the freeway they’re using [or] move into the right [lane] if [the congestion] is in the left so they’re not going to be that guy at the last minute trying to cross all the traffic,” Oliver said while speaking during a press conference.
The biggest hurdle when introducing technology is change management.
“Unless we manage that change, it’s just going to crumble,” Royal Logistics’ Groce said, explaining that the best way to overcome any resistance is to be transparent. “Let everybody from the driver to the ops team to the mechanics to the safety team know why you’re doing it and how it’s going to make their job easier and be detailed in that.”
Groce advises other carriers to know what they want to get from their data and then reach out to vendors to find out if they can make it happen.
“If they can’t, move on because there are so many vendors out there that do a lot of the same things,” he said, “Go with the one that’s going to be flexible with you and be able to build a rapport, build a data stack based off of what you’re looking for, because every trucking company is different and everybody makes money different ways.”
