If your drivers work locally and play the stock market, they’ll love the emerging Internet products.
Judging from the Internet World Wireless show at New York’s Javits Center last week, stock market watchers and traders are by far the biggest market for emerging mobile Internet services
But what about fleet operators?
Emerging Internet products offer potential benefits, but more for local fleets than for wide-ranging operations.

Internet World Wireless featured 161 exhibitors, everyone from AccuWeather.com, offering weather reports on the Internet, to ZyGlobe Inc., a provider of mobile business systems. All pointed to the growing availability of direct Internet access for digital devices – computers and mobile phones.
Of course, you can access the Internet now wherever you can make a phone call. All you need is a modem to translate old-fashioned analog telephone noise into the ones and zeros of digital code. You dial up your ISP (Internet Service Provider), maybe AOL, log on and surf.
The new all-digital ISPs eliminate the modem. In the process they speed up connection speeds, which are now available in limited instances up to 128K – double the fastest modem speed. In some cases you don’t have to log on; as long as your device is turned on, you’re connected.
But this kind of service is available only in very specific areas. If you operate a fleet within a limited metro area, you could see benefits. At some point, that might include inexpensive, off-the shelf dispatch software built around a single carrier web site to be accessed by management, drivers and customers.
Now, however, the dispatch products at Internet World Wireless aim not at delivery fleets, but at service industries with mobile workers. With direct Internet access, a mobile worker can reach back into a company’s database for information on repairs, products, parts, etc.
This kind of information is usually unnecessary even if it were available to delivery drivers.
Does direct Internet access have a future in trucking?
Without a doubt. But it will take time to build out the necessary wireless infrastructure and creativity to come up with useful applications.
Meanwhile, don’t lose your modem.