Omnitracs' Road Ahead blog

Uncover top market insights — straight from an industry executive

Ayron McLochlin
Ayron McLochlin
VP of Sales, New Business

It’s time to transform.

This was the main sentiment of the Commercial Carrier Journal’s (CCJ) Symposium in Birmingham, AL, from August 9-11. Representing Omnitracs, I was delighted to join other fleet executives and share my top recommendations on maximizing potential in a robust market, with a particular focus on preparing for challenges and opportunities ahead.

Omnitracs was one of the event’s five sponsors. As part of the first day’s agenda, I joined my fellow peers from Freightliner, Shell, and Comdata to discuss the latest innovations in the trucking industry. Read on for a couple of helpful points I shared during the panel.

Panel point #1: Driver retention is connected to video safety

My first focus was on the elephant in the room — driver retention. Driver retention is a primary concern with most fleets, and the industry continues to see a significant push for video-based safety solutions. There is a strong correlation between the two. Efficient and robust video-based safety solutions are vital to protecting drivers on the road while helping them improve their driving behaviors and skills in real time, even post-trip — so they can take greater pride in their work. These solutions enable drivers to feel safer, cared for, and more eager to stay with your operation.

2020 was a challenging year in many ways, and 2021 hasn’t offered us the return to normalcy that many of us expected it would. Amid the tumultuousness, fleet leaders must prioritize retaining quality drivers by investing in industry-leading solutions, like video-based safety technology, to stand out in the highly competitive driver-employer market.

Panel point #2: Converging innovations and industries streamline your operations

Fleets are looking for ways to increase efficiencies and simplify the driver experience without introducing undue risk to their business. Omnitracs merges innovation and convenience to enable fleets to streamline their processes while enhancing — not limiting — inventive progress.

Powertrains, which are the moving components in a vehicle, and onboard technologies get a lot of attention, but innovation is what keeps our industry moving forward. Welcoming SmartDrive to the Omnitracs family in 2020 brought our two pioneering companies and our technologies together. Now, fleet leaders can begin reaping the benefits of convergence, or the merging of technologies on a single source of truth, in commercial transportation.

We can look to our smartphones for the best example of this. We used to have separate devices for music, audio calls, and watching videos. Now, these innovations have converged on the smartphone we all know and love today. Fleet leaders can enable their teams with the applications they need, all in one place, for the most convenient, efficient, and optimized experience user experience. I can’t wait to see how things will shift once we integrate the technology developed by Solera. Exciting times ahead!

It was a pleasure to participate in this event. Stay tuned for more upcoming event coverage on the Omnitracs Road Ahead Blog. In the meantime, you can uncover more event insights in this blog recap on last year’s American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) conference.