IV. Transportation Modes and Freight Communities

Freight identification technologies are applied and standards developed in modal and business community contexts. Having a sense of the different contexts is necessary for any meaningful dialog about harmonizing different approaches. This section of the paper outlines the modal and business contexts.

"Freight community" is a useful term to describe the business context—the combination of shippers, carriers, third parties, and government agencies that are concerned with different slices or aspects of freight transportation. One organization could be part of multiple communities depending on the issue at hand. The existence of a freight community is reflected, among other things, in its distinctive approach to and use of freight identification technologies and systems.

The challenge of harmonizing or increasing the interoperability of freight identification technologies is really a challenge of bridging freight communities. Given that effective harmonization is usually consensual, one must identify and articulate the benefits to specific communities of moving beyond their own near-term concerns.

There are distinctive approaches to equipment and freight identification in different modes of transportation, approaches that cut across the freight communities. It is worthwhile to scan the approaches from both modal and freight community perspectives.

A. Modal Approaches

Railroads. The railroads are the only mode with a mandatory standard for automatic equipment identification (AEI). A pair of passive radio frequency license plate tags, originally designed by Amtech, is fixed permanently to the sides of every railcar in interchange service. Fixed wayside readers provide interrogation, collecting data that could provide all railroads with excellent shared location information. Individual railroads maintain the database relationships between their rolling stock and their customers' freight shipments. The AAR standard addresses the placement of the tags, but not the readers.

The value of this system has not been fully realized. Most railroads chose to install wayside readers at the entry and exit points of their terminals, and they achieve good results. However, at least one major U.S. railroad chose for financial reasons to curtail installation of wayside readers, thus undercutting its and its successor's ability to capture accurate train consist information and manage train operations. At least one other major railroad chose to install its readers on the mainline, roughly fifty miles from its terminals, then use the data from approaching trains to print a manual arrival checklist; that railroad has had disappointing results from its AEI system.[16]

Some railroads use separate satellite-based systems to gather and maintain near-real-time data on the locations of their locomotives and hence their trains. It is not clear that any railroad has yet mastered the linkage between train location data, car location data, and train interconnection schedules to produce good forecasts of the ability to meet freight customer schedules and commitments.

Intermodal Container Carriers. There is an International Standards Organization standard for freight container AEI tags, and the standard is technically compatible with the AAR railroad standard. However, the ISO standard is voluntary and little used. To the author's knowledge, only two container carriers have chosen to adopt the technology for all of their containers, and one of the two has retrenched. Other carriers have judged the payback for the system to be insufficient.

American Presidents Line was the leader in adopting the ISO standard tags but, midway through its implementation, APL entered its global alliance with non-US flag carriers who did not agree to invest in RFID. Since a mixed fleet of tagged and untagged containers would be unwieldy, APL is now in the process of tagging its container chassis fleet rather than its containers.

Matson followed APL in deciding to implement the standard tags, followed through on their implementation, and are reported to be very pleased with the results. Matson, as a domestic Jones Act ocean carrier, essentially runs a closed-loop system, and that enabled them to avoid the problems that forestalled APL's original program.

Most container carriers appear to use a mix of equipment identification processes depending to some extent on whether they are operating out of a terminal that they control or one shared by multiple non-allied carriers. At least one major carrier is looking ahead to less expensive GPS capabilities as a means to achieve AEI. An independent terminal operator in the northeast put together a digital image recognition system to manage gate access and internal controls. Barring a major surprise, it seems fair to conclude that the existing ISO standard will remain little used and of marginal importance.[17]

Air Freight. While there is a sophisticated air traffic control system in place for automated identification and tracking the movement of aircraft, there is a much more decentralized approach to freight identification. There is a voluntary standard—an International Air Transport Association Recommended Practice, which is compatible with the AAR and ISO standards. Although Japan Air Lines uses the standard, most of the air carriers do not. Similar to most of the ocean container carriers, individual air carriers design and manage their own freight management practices.

Small Package Express. Express carriers such as FedEx, UPS, and Emery have package identification and control processes that are sophisticated yet unique. Each carrier's system is a self-contained closed loop. Using their own barcode labels and systems, the carriers track every transaction from package receipt to delivery. (United Parcel Service, for example, has adopted a circular two-dimensional barcode.) Customers can access Internet sites to check individual package status. In contrast to their rich data on movement transactions, the express carriers generally do not maintain cross-reference information to the customer's database identification of a normal package. It is up to the sender or receiver to maintain information on the nature or contents of the package, and to maintain the relationship between that information and the carrier's waybill or package number.

Motor Carriers. This is the most complex mode in terms of freight identification technologies, automated equipment identification, tagging, and tracking. Related yet different technology approaches apply to different functions, and different segments in the motor carrier industry have different interests and needs.

Long-haul truckload operators have arguably the best fleet management capabilities of any surface mode, built largely around integrated real-time location determination, communications, and software services from firms such as Qualcomm and HighwayMaster. The American Trucking Association has a voluntary standard for automatic equipment identification, consistent with the AAR and ISO container AEI standards, yet rarely used for trailer identification. States and other jurisdictions require different and incompatible RFID tag systems are used for regulatory clearance, border crossing facilitation, and electronic toll payment.

LTL truckers have less interest in the real-time location tracking since most of their line-haul runs are scheduled terminal-to-terminal trips. However, the larger LTL carriers often use sophisticated identification and automation tools for terminal freight sortation and cross-dock management.

Dray operators generally make the least use of advanced technologies. This is a segment characterized by large numbers of firms, small fleets, and very tight finances. Some pickup and delivery services, however, may use sophisticated vehicle location tracking and route optimization systems.

B. Freight Community Approaches

Shippers and Hubs. Shippers in general are the most diffuse freight community. However, they are becoming more tightly coupled with their carriers, third party service providers, and customers in ways closely related to freight identification technologies. There is a macro logistics trend towards supply chain integration that carries with it initiatives such as Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Make To Order (MTO) manufacturing, all of which increase the demand for highly reliable time-certain transportation and distribution services. Automated freight status information feeding powerful analytic tools is necessary to maintain the levels of service and economy. One result seems to be an ironic combination of skepticism and openness towards new automated tools and technologies: caution about the payoff of expensive new capabilities matched with a tremendous zeal to implement new technologies once the decision is made that they can pay off.

Hazardous Materials Movements. Many freight movements involve commodities with the potential to cause grave harm in accidents or incidents. Two themes stand out: accident/incident prevention and effective response when incidents do occur. Freight community members—or constituencies—include federal and state regulators, a wide array of emergency response organizations, the carriers (especially railroad and truck), and the shippers of hazardous materials.

Fast access to detailed knowledge about the specific materials involved in a spill is critical to effective response. While there has been discussion about the application of automated freight identification technologies, such as RFID tags, to facilitate such access, the practical problems are daunting. Given the unplanned and widely distributed occurrence of incidents, these problems include how to distribute and maintain interrogators and how to train and maintain the skills of very occasional users in emergency response organizations.

The preferred approach seems to combine uniform placarding and labeling of hazmat shipments with rapid remote access to detailed shipment and countermeasure information. A report on Operation Respond describes several systems or services that facilitate direct access for emergency response dispatchers to remote databases that contain critical shipment data. The first responder to the scene of an incident gets the trailer or railcar identification data and calls that in to his or her 911 dispatcher, who contacts the carrier or a central data repository.[18] This "placard plus communication" approach does not seem to impose a high need for harmonization with other freight identification approaches.

Strategic Mobility and National Defense. The Department of Defense and its business partners share in a requirement to deploy and sustain military forces at great distances. Speed, efficiency, and dependable access to accurate shipment information are critical to effective logistics support. Because of this, DOD is a strong proponent of automated identification technologies for freight and other applications.

DOD logistics must be successful in two extreme environments: the sophisticated commercial transportation and communications infrastructure characteristic of the U.S., Western Europe, and parts of Asia and the Middle East; and an austere, chaotic, and potentially hostile deployed area of operations. The first environment presents an opportunity to draw high quality data from a carrier's systems; the second environment imposes unique demands for flexibility and redundancy. For freight identification, the demands of an austere environment result in the use of high-end read/write RFID tags capable of serving as portable electronic consists for containers and pallets of freight. The non-standard tags hold up to 128KB of information on a shipment. DOD is testing these tags for munitions exports, palletized air freight, containerized resupply, and military unit movements

Within the continental U.S., DOD adds an additional level of safety and security to its munitions movements. Commercial munitions motor carriers receive a mileage-based payment to equip their vehicles with Qualcomm's OmniTracs GPS and digital satellite communications. A DOD hub in Norfolk, VA operates the Defense Transportation Tracking System (DTTS), monitoring data feeds for all military services.

Regulatory Facilitation. Some safety and regulatory issues apply to motor carriers whether or not they carry hazmat. This includes truck size and weight limits, drivers' hours of service, fuel tax permitting, and registration. Carriers are interested in running safely and minimizing the inefficiencies of weigh station and document clearance stops. Regulators are interested in assuring compliance, reducing their costs, and facilitating commercial business. Known generally as Commercial Vehicle Operations within ITS (ITS/CVO), these applications are well suited to automated media such as various forms of RFID.

The most advanced ITS/CVO harmonization activities to date are oriented around major highway corridors, such as the I-75 corridor between Florida and Ontario, Canada, and the I-5 corridor from California to the British Columbia border crossing. The interests of the corridor communities cross over into separate but related activities, such as interoperable electronic toll payment systems and integrated traveler advisory and information services. These communities and the truckers who operate in multiple corridors will benefit from the ITS Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) standard effort, which is concentrating on the 915 MHz spectrum. Another activity with potential benefits is the network integration of ITS/CVO data feeds into private fleet management systems.

Customs and Border Crossing Facilitation. Logically, this is a subset of the preceding community focused on the control functions and delays at border crossings. Even finer cuts could distinguish between freight communities concerned with NAFTA surface border crossing and others concerned with ocean ports, containers, and airfreight. Border crossing issues deserve separate attention because of the international jurisdictional issues, the overlay of immigration controls, and the greater levels of congestion and delay. However, the perspective on freight identification technologies and issues is consistent with the larger Regulatory/CVO community.[19]

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