Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2018

HDT APRIL 2018 18 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM Hotline Scott Sutarik Associate VP Commercial Vehicles Geotab SIGN UP FOR YOUR DAILY NEWS AT WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM HEADLINENEWS TRUCKINGS MOST RESPECTED BUSINESS REPORT Hot truck sales new technology at DTNA in 2018 Coming off of a record year for market share Daimler Trucks North America is looking forward to a busy year as it works to meet high customer demand and readies for some big new technology announcements In a video conference call for reporters in late February DTNA President and CEO Roger Nielsen teased upcoming announcements about predictive maintenance electric trucks and advanced driver assistance systems that can lead to autonomous technologies Around the world Daimler Trucks last year sold more than 470000 vehicles In North America DTNA posted record Class 6 8 market share of 398 or about 151000 trucks buses and chassis For 2018 DTNA expects a significant increase in overall sales to levels seen in 2015 To meet that demand were increasing production capacity everywhere Nielsen said noting that the truck market has definitely heated up its over caffeinated like me However he said for all but a few DTNA customers those truck orders are for replacement trucks rather than added capacity In addition he said the market does have an upper limit and the challenge in meeting the demand for new trucks will be the supply chain for parts and components When I look at the constraints our suppliers are facing its not raw materials its labor people who want to come work second and third shift Someone wanting a truck delivered in the first half of the year is already out of luck he noted We are a global company with a global supply chain and frankly the difficult part of the task now is to manage the supply chain and make sure everyone keeps pace with demand Nielsen said DTNA is leveraging the global resources and technology of its parent company especially in the area of truck electrification Mitsubishi Fuso last year rolled out the eCanter and Mercedes Benz in February announced a baby 8 heavy duty electric e Actros for Europe Nielsen hinted that well see a truck electrification announcement here in North America mid year When it comes to other cutting edge technology he said We want to put future technology out there that makes sense for our customers They dont want new technology for the sake of technology they want new technology because they believe it can give them a competitive edge in the marketplace and can reduce their real cost of ownership Daimler is spending more than 500 million euros some 620 million for research and development into connectivity electric mobility and automated driving for trucks Deborah Lockridge Q Lets start out with who Geotab is and what it does A We are a telematics company We specialize in a variety of things vehicle tracking as well as pulling diagnostics data off the CANbus We also have a whole host of other parts of the business One of the big things we talk about is the Geotab Marketplace our ecosystem where we have a variety of partners such as TMS providers cameras tire pressure monitoring temperature control monitoring for reefers remote diagnostics a whole host of different things The data analytics is another piece and data security we spend a tremendous amount of time talking about security And were an engineering company we specialize in doing everything in house Q What trends do you see affecting this part of your customers business during the next decade A One is data analytics being able to take the data and how do you leverage that to make your team more efficient in their decision making Thats going to be huge including machine learning how do you apply that across your business The second one I believe strongly is going to be more and more important is the security aspect I think over the next three to five years youre going to see more and more news related to cyber security whats being done what are best practices whos following them and whos not in short how do I keep my data secure For the full interview go to www truckinginfo com Sutarik DTNAs Roger Nielsen speaks to reporters via video conference