It isn't about weed, whites, and wine anymore. Not when you have information systems masquerading as freight lines.
Walt Maguire thinks his boss is trying to convert him from a truck driver into a computer jock. Walt and I are sitting in the cab of his truck, chewing the fat at a dusty truck stop overlooking I-15 in Utah. It's 101 degrees outside, but the air conditioning is cranked up so high my teeth are chattering. Walt hardly notices. He's hopping mad, telling me he's proud to be a trucker, even though it hasn't been much fun ever since his boss back in Phoenix installed a computer in his truck two months ago.
"I've always hated computers," Walt fumes. "I don't understand them, and I never intended to operate one. Fifteen years ago, when everyone first started talking about computers, I never imagined I'd end up with one inside my truck. But now look at that!"
He points an accusing finger at a laptop-sized keyboard tethered to the dashboard by a rubber umbilical cord. With its modest, four-line LCD display and color-coded keypad, the keyboard looks like a Fisher-Price toy. I ask Walt to show me how it works. He reaches down to pull the keyboard from its mounting bracket, but it's wedged in pretty tight, stubbornly resisting his effort to pry it loose. "Don't worry," he grins. "I know how to get it out." Walt slides back in the driver's seat, winds up with his accelerator foot, and delivers a swift kick that sends the keyboard flying out of the mounting bracket and bouncing across the floor mats.
The hapless computer lets out a pathetic beep, and Walt's mood suddenly seems to brighten. "I could probably fix that bracket by softening up the plastic with a cigarette lighter," he admits. "But to tell you the truth, that just wouldn't feel as good."
Out here on the diesel infobahn, the boss always rides shotgun. The biggest names in the trucking industry are installing onboard computers in thousands of their long-distance trucks, and for many truckers, the experience of being out on the road, miles from nowhere, may never be the same again. That's because OmniTRACS computers like the one in Walt's truck are more than just overgrown calculators. Manufactured and sold by Qualcomm Inc. - the same people who peddle commercial versions of the Eudora e-mail software package - OmniTRACS is a sophisticated, satellite-linked communications device that can send and receive messages anywhere in the US, provide directions by accessing an online database of common destinations, monitor and transmit vehicle performance data such as speed and engine rpm, and pinpoint Walt's exact location for the folks back in Phoenix - to within 1,000 feet.
Truck driving has changed a lot since those polyester days when "Convoy" was a Top-40 hit and hordes of Rubber Duck wannabes waited in line at Radio Shack to buy CB radios. But out on the highway it takes a subtle eye to spot the transformation. Interstate trucking was deregulated in 1980, and competition in the industry has been cutthroat ever since. According to Ken Seigel at the American Trucking Associations, of the top 100 trucking companies in 1980, only 15 are left today. And a study conducted by the Teamsters showed that more than 130 major freight carriers went belly up between 1980 and 1993, in the process sending over 150,000 people scurrying to find new jobs.
At the same time, venerable giants like Mason & Dixon Lines, P-I-E Nationwide, McLean Trucking Co., Branch Motor Express, and St. Johnsbury Trucking Co. were disappearing, computers were proliferating across America. Guided by an old trucker's mantra - "You're not making any money if the rig ain't loaded and the wheels ain't turning" - the gurus of the industry eventually put two and two together to figure out that information management is the key to keeping businesses afloat. That's why more than 90,000 of the
1 million trucks crisscrossing the country today now sport small, flying saucer-shaped satellite communications antennae on their roofs - the telltale sign that an OmniTRACS unit is strapped to the dash. Upward of 1.75 million messages a day pass through Qualcomm's network-management center in San Diego. Meanwhile, back at the home offices of dozens of leading trucking companies, cluttered dispatchers booths have been transformed into large-screen nerve centers that look like Mission Control.
And get this: while untold multitudes of cyberjunkies eagerly await the day when they'll be able to send and receive data anywhere in the country using wireless personal digital assistants, truck drivers have been doing it since the late 1980s.
Still, for many old-school truck drivers like Walt Maguire, the OmniTRACS system represents an Orwellian intrusion into the sanctity of a trucker's cab. Some have even taken to nicknaming their onboard computer terminals "Big Brother."
It's pretty easy to understand the sentiment. Cruising down a freeway 2,000 miles from the boss' office, a trucker whose rig has been equipped with an OmniTRACS unit is subject to more on-the-job scrutiny than the average office serf who toils away in a burlap cubicle just a few yards from the supervisor's desk.
But what's really going on here? Is the Qualcomm system part of a diabolical conspiracy to corral America's modern-day cowboys with a digital lasso?
That all depends upon whom you ask.
"Sure, the computer makes it easy for Big Brother to watch you," Ralph Lowrey told me from his perch behind the steering wheel as we rolled down Highway 99 near Fresno, California. "But if you're out here doing your job the way you're supposed to, it shouldn't make much difference who's looking over your shoulder."
Ralph and I were making our way south in the early afternoon sun, hauling 22 tons of powdered lemonade mix to a warehouse in Anaheim, just outside of LA. Anaheim was still six or seven hours away, so for the time being we had nothing to do but drive and get to know one another. Ralph, a muscular, 42-year-old with steely eyes and a broad grin, told me he's been hanging around trucks ever since he was 12, when his daddy taught him how to drive an old Peterbilt the family used to haul hay around their Wisconsin farm. In his late teens, Ralph got to feeling that it was time to see the world, so he packed up and joined the Marines, rising to the rank of sergeant after pulling an 18-month tour of duty in Vietnam. A knee injury halted his military career, and Ralph figured he might as well go back to the trade he'd learned from his dad. He started driving trucks. Ralph can't remember exactly how many trucking companies he's been with over the years, but he puts the number somewhere between 15 and 20. Along the way, he says, he worked for plenty of folks who embodied "every shade of shadiness."
Just north of Bakersfield, I asked Ralph what it was like to be a trucker back in the not-so-distant past, before the days of onboard computers and space-age mobile communications. The thing he remembered most was having to phone his dispatcher two or three times a day just to check in, pick up load assignments, and receive the latest pronouncements from the front office. He recalled that the simple task of exchanging these mundane bits of information consumed a lot of time and energy. He estimated that he wasted hours each day parking his truck, searching for pay phones, listening to busy signals, and angrily twiddling his thumbs while on hold. He said it was a big, fat pain in the butt.
"I've never liked talking on the phone," Ralph confessed after taking a swig of coffee from his Thirst Buster travel mug. "If you try to get across all the things you need to say using the telephone, you end up spending a lot of time going nowhere. I hate waiting on hold for 45 minutes just to have a three-minute conversation with my dispatcher. I'd much rather punch a few buttons to find out what I need to know. That way I can get back out on the road - where I like to be."
Such explanations made it easier to understand why Ralph had wanted to be one of the first in line to get an OmniTRACS unit in his truck when his employer, Schneider National Inc., announced it would begin deploying the system in 1988. Headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Schneider National operates a fleet of 9,000 pumpkin-orange trucks that the company refers to as "The Orange On-Time Machine." Elsewhere, however, Schneider has been called "an information system masquerading as a trucking line." Essentially, both rubrics describe the same phenomenon.
Throughout the 1980s, while competitors were dropping like flies, Schneider National invested heavily in high-tech information-management systems to squeeze every last penny out of the trucks it operates. When the Qualcomm system came along, Schneider management was quick to realize that extending cyberspace to the interstates would make it possible to keep a finger constantly on the pulse of its nationwide fleet. That, in turn, would enable the company to offer demanding customers unprecedented levels of service and on-time reliability. And as an added bonus, surveys of drivers consistently showed that truckers put a real premium on quality-of-life issues, like convenient communications and getting home as often as possible. Thus, the bean-counters hoped, putting an OmniTRACS unit in every truck might also help lower Schneider's driver burnout rate - a painfully expensive problem that plagues the trucking industry.
Thus far, the figures suggest that the techno-strategy has paid off well. Since Schneider began using the Qualcomm system in 1988, company revenues have more than doubled, reaching US$1.25 billion in 1993 alone. Today Schneider National is the largest full-truckload carrier in the land, and its orange trucks are almost as common as Golden Arches along America's highways and byways.
Amazingly, Schneider earned these huge piles of cash by emulating the tortoise rather than the hare. Truckers, traditionally paid by the mile, have assumed since time immemorial that to earn the big bucks they must deliver loads in the shortest amount of time possible. In other words: drive as fast as you can without getting caught.
Schneider National turned that logic on its head by using precision logistics, rather than raw velocity, to win the moneymaking race. At Schneider, the 55 mph speed limit isn't just the law - it's also company policy. By keeping fuel costs down and reducing highway accidents, Schneider figured out that driving at 55 could be more profitable in the long run. And to underscore the point, the company decided to link driver bonuses - which can add more than 25 percent to a driver's pay - to compliance with a 58 mph limit. The rules of the game are simple: drive at or below 58 mph for 90 percent of the time (drivers are given a 10 percent "overspeed" allowance so they don't have to ride the brakes while going downhill) and bring home a bigger paycheck. Of course, there are no speed traps to avoid or radar guns to detect. As long as the motor is running, the OmniTRACS system will be watching your every move.
Driving at 58 mph may make good business sense, but that still doesn't make it cool. After all, playing cat-and-mouse with Smokey Bear is as much a part of truck-driving culture as diesel engines and country music. At truck stops and rest areas all across the land, Schneider National drivers are the butt of countless jokes simply because they seem to spend much of their time lumbering along in the far-right lane. "I don't see why Schneider needs those damn computers," guffawed one trucker I spoke with in Connecticut. "It seems to me they've got their drivers pretty well programmed."
I repeated the jibe to Ralph Lowrey. He just shook his head. The way he sees it, if going fast means so much to you, that only means you've forgotten the real reason why you're sitting in the driver's seat. Sure, trucking is a way of life, but ultimately it's all about making a living. And if the boss is willing to pay cold cash to have a 40-ton truck driven at the legal speed limit - well, then what's the hurry? Ralph says he'll take it slow. And just for kicks, he'll even turn the 58 mph rule into a "personal best" competition.
He invited me to grab the computer keyboard and punch the blue function key marked "View Status." Instantly, a slew of figures flashed onto the display, bearing witness to Ralph's driving habits throughout this two-week performance period. I began reading off the stats. Ralph had covered 2,651 miles. He had exceeded his engine rpm target only 0.08 percent of the time. His engine idling time was 0.54 percent. (Idling, like speeding, is frowned upon as a waste of fuel.) And his overspeed ratio was a measly 0.59 percent - far below his 10 percent allowance. "Hey, that's good!" Ralph beamed. "I've gotten my overspeed down from 0.63!"
Not all truck drivers are so sporting. Every once in a while, some decide they want to beat the system. Unfortunately, while most truckers know a lot about the nuts and bolts of diesel engines, few have much experience penetrating the mysteries of digital code. As a result, most attempts to hack the Qualcomm system have thus far focused on the computer's mechanical vulnerabilities, instead of its electronic innards.
To escape from Big Brother's watchful gaze, truckers have tried ripping the cord out of the unit's satellite-communications antenna. Others have blinded the system by covering the antenna with a galvanized metal bucket. Still others have installed burned-out fuses into the computer's power supply and then claimed that the unit "shorted out" inexplicably. One enterprising trucker even invented a device that could override a few of the OmniTRACS system's engine-performance sensors. The gadget, which functioned like a dimmer switch, enabled the driver to dial in any given speed - say, 58 mph - which would then register in the computer's black box regardless of how fast the truck was moving. The trick worked like a charm, apparently, until dispatchers began to notice that performance data from the hacker's truck registered as a flat line for hours on end - perfectly constant speed and perfectly constant engine rpm. Since real-world hills and head winds make such a feat all but impossible, the powers-on-high were tipped off to the scheme. The switch was discovered, and the trucker was fired.
So much for la résistance.
Shortly after midnight, Ralph and I arrived in Anaheim and dropped off the trailer load of lemonade mix. After gracefully maneuvering the trailer into a parking space, Ralph used one of the OmniTRACS system's fill-in-the-blank macros, called "canned messages," to tell the folks in Green Bay that the load had arrived at its destination safely - and of course, on time. And with that, he took off his boots, climbed into the bunk in the rear of the cab, and went to sleep.
Bright and early the next morning, Ralph double-checked a message telling him where to find the next load. The instructions were straightforward - pick up trailer number F86795, one of the empty 53-foot trailers parked in the yard at Anaheim, and drive it 70 miles northwest to a warehouse in Oxnard. In Oxnard we were to drop off the empty trailer and pick up a full one, F85281, which was already loaded and ready to go. Included in the message were all the street addresses, freight-bill numbers, special loading instructions, and delivery schedules Ralph would need to get in, get out, and get back on the road as quickly as possible.
The information in these messages emanated from Schneider National's Corporate Business Center, a concrete-and-glass citadel that rises from a moat of employee parking lots and immaculately manicured lawns just southeast of Green Bay's airport. It is a surprisingly anonymous place that, from the outside, betrays few clues of its intimate connection to the trucking industry. There are no
warehouses, loading docks, or maintenance yards anywhere within sight of the building. Nor are there any of the company's pumpkin-orange trucks, unless you count the precisely detailed, one-third scale model of a Schneider National tractor-trailer that seems to float above the front door in the building's main lobby. President Don Schneider installed the huge model to remind all the information technicians who work in his Edge City wonderland that trucking is what their work is all about. Or, as one manager explained to me, "Even if you spend your days programming computers, around here we still want you to think of yourself as a trucker."
The core of Schneider's headquarters is dominated by the company's command center - a sprawling, 1-acre atrium called the Customer Service Floor that is jammed with computer terminals and populated around-the-clock by swarms of Schneider employees. Looking vaguely like the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange - without all the paper - the Customer Service Floor is where the job of matching drivers up with loads takes place. In Schneider-speak, the process is referred to as "flow management." That means trying to keep a highly dynamic system in a constant state of balance: most trucks should be full, some empty trucks should be on hand near locations where demand is anticipated, and each driver should get home at least once every 10 days to spend time with his or her family. In a sense, "flow management" is like one of those headache-inducing logic problems in which Sally needs to sit next to Jeff, Jeff wants to sit next to Judy, Judy can't sit next to Sally, etc. Only imagine that there are 9,000 people seated at the table, and that the table is constantly in motion.
Much of Schneider National's computer power is geared toward keeping these flows in balance, and the OmniTRACS units installed in Schneider's trucks are vital nodes in the Orange On-Time Machine's neural net. Every two hours, the mainframes in Green Bay receive updated information about vehicle position, load status, and drivers' behind-the-wheel hours for each truck in the fleet. These field updates are then fed into the terminals on the Customer Service Floor, which match up available drivers with available loads. The computer can do this by choosing from a variety of optimization patterns. It can figure out which drivers are available to cover a maximum number of miles with a minimum of empty time. It can figure out which drivers are soon due for some time off, and set them up for an eventual return trip home. Or it can assign loads to drivers that will take them home right away. Or it can set up a "relay" in which two drivers meet at some designated midpoint, switch trailers, then return to their original starting places. All this in the interests of making sure that everyone - truckers and customers alike - stays happy.
Or at least pacified.
Ralph and I had picked up the load in Oxnard, and we were heading back up north, this time carrying 780 cases of aloe-impregnated, two-ply toilet paper. Cruising along I-5, we began climbing "The Grapevine," a steep mountain range that separates the Los Angeles basin from the scorched flatlands of California's Central Valley. Because of our light load, we were able to climb the grade at a steady clip, eventually moving into the left lane to overtake a blue Kenworth. As we passed, I looked over at the driver of the slower truck, who seemed visibly startled. Smoke began pouring from his exhaust stacks, and then he was ahead of us, blocking Ralph's attempt to pass. Ralph was unfazed, having seen this reaction before. "He just can't stand the thought of being passed by a Schneider National truck," Ralph laughed. "But that's OK. I probably make more than he does."
The Central Valley opened up beneath us, and we pulled into a truck stop to refill Ralph's travel mug with coffee and refill the truck's fuel tanks with diesel. When we got back on the road, Ralph and I sat in meditative silence as we plowed our way through a thunder squall. We had come to see each other eye to eye - trading stories, laughing a lot, talking about religion, and even engaging in a heated argument about gun control. (The journalist in favor, the trucker vehemently against.) I knew that Ralph was both shrewd and practical, but his obvious pride and independence made it clear that he was no company yes man. And for that reason alone I found it hard to understand why he nonchalantly embraced a communications and vehicle tracking system that so palpably encroached on his autonomy.
The squall passed, and the cab filled with light as the sun fell low on the horizon. I decided to ask Ralph what he'd wanted to be when he was growing up.
He told me he'd wanted to be a cowboy. He said that at about the same time his dad taught him to drive a truck, he also learned to ride bulls and break wild horses. He added that he'd competed in rodeos from the time he was 14 right up until his medical discharge from the Marine Corps.
It struck me that Ralph was the real thing. Not just a pop-culture reinvention of the cowboy myth, nor some misfit in boots who fancies himself a badass, but the genuine article. And so I said, "Well, Ralph, then tell me: What does it really mean to be a cowboy?"
The question caught him a little off guard, but he rolled with it.
"Being a cowboy is a lifestyle," he began. "The way people talk about cowboys, and what cowboys are really all about are two different things. The real cowboys were people who did what they were told, worked hard, and did it all for not much money. It's something they did for the freedom. It's about not knowing where your next shower will be, but doing a job and doing it right."
There was a pause.
"It's a lot like being a truck driver. Someone may tell you where you need to go, but you decide how you're going to get there, where you want to eat, and when you want to stop. There will always be truckers, and truckers are always going to act like truckers. Half of them are going to follow the rules, and half of them are going to pretend they're outlaws. It's been that way ever since we were driving teams of 20 mules across the prairie. You make your own choices. Still."
With that, we were quiet again. A fiery red sunset burned in the west. Miles of unbending American highway unrolled beneath us. The diesel engine gurgled at a steady roar, and the display panel on the OmniTRACS unit glowed a luminescent green. But it was all right. Everything was all right. I forgot about Big Brother.
