It’s interesting that Gearworks Inc. is headquartered in Minneapolis. So is PeopleNet, the first company to bring the Internet to truck dispatching.

As it happens, Gearworks is trying to make fleet dispatching something close to an all-Internet affair.
Like many other mobile communications users, PeopleNet’s InTouch system customers log onto a web site and go to their own page to see truck locations and send driver messages. The PeopleNet service updates the site with messages and data from trucks it receives mostly over ground-based wireless systems (InTouch can also receive GPS location information over the Aeris.net satellite system).
But Gearworks’ new product, called etrace, uses the Internet at both ends of the communications chain. Both dispatchers and drivers access web sites to get and send information.
According to Gearworks, maintaining a totally web-based service center will lower costs, and customers can use off-the-shelf hardware. No proprietary hardware is needed, just Internet-ready handheld computers or web-enabled phones.
But there is at least one drawback: coverage.
For drivers to access the Internet – and etrace -- with, say, a handheld Palm VII computer, they need direct, wireless Internet access. Right now, there isn’t a whole lot available except in larger markets.
Perhaps that’s why Gearworks is taking initial aim at the LTL industry. According to Gearworks’ Rob Davis, etrace is working to interface with Maddocks software, whose products offer both LTL and truckload functionality. Much LTL activity, he correctly noted, involves local pickup and delivery.
But wireless Internet is spreading fast. Maybe that’s why Gearworks is also talking to truckload software providers like TMW Systems and Tom McLeod Software.
Whether or not etrace catches on, however, the spread of wireless Internet access will surely bring lower cost mobile applications and services to the entire trucking industry.