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Things were simple when Canada Cartage began operations in 1914. A horse-drawn cart would go out on a delivery run and it would arrive at its destination when it arrived. The good news was that it couldn't go any farther or faster than a horse could drag it. And that wasn't very far.
Things have changed; 21st Century logistics demands information all along the route.
"Today, when a driver switches trailers or picks up a load, he uploads the information into his handheld, and the GPS tracking system can spot where the truck is," said Jeff Lindsay, vice-president of finance of Canada Cartage in Toronto.
That's good news for the e-economy. If you're working on a just-in-time schedule and the shipment doesn't arrive on time, you're cooked.
"The fact is that just-in-time processes tend to fall apart due to unexpected occurrences," said Miguel Gonsalves, vice-president of Pickering, Ont.-based AirIQ Inc.'s commercial transport division. "We try to ensure nothing unexpected happens."
Considering its importance, it's not surprising that a whole industry has grown up around the idea of ensuring that the unexpected doesn't happen. With the convergence of wireless computing, communications and global positioning system technologies, companies like AirIQ can pinpoint the location of their customers' trucks, cars, planes, trains and automobiles instantaneously, and with almost pinpoint accuracy.
"We track things that move--it's as simple as that," said Michael Brown, director of product development at @Track Communications in Richardson, Tex. "That means anything from trucks to service vehicles, busses, trains and boats. In the future, if it moves, it'll be tracked."
Indeed, the GPS is one of the few areas of high-tech that continues to expand at its pre-dot-com-extinction pace. Much of that has to do with the fact that it was only with the US government's relaxation of restrictions on the use of GPS in 2000 that the technology has become accurate enough to track the exact location of mobile assets. Before the restrictions were relaxed, civilian GPS systems operated with a 100-metre margin of error; today, it's 10 metres.
"That made commercialized GPS tracking possible," Gonsalves said. "With the right combination of technology and management, you don't have to wait for a truck to appear at your customer's loading dock to...