Isaac Instruments CEO Jacques DeLarochellière addresses attendees at the company’s user conference. (Seth Clevenger/Transportation Topics)(Seth Clevenger/Transportation Topics)
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DALLAS — In-cab technology provider Isaac Instruments is rolling out a new analytics platform and its first set of AI-powered features to help trucking companies derive more value from their data.
The company’s new Isaac Analytics product is designed to help fleets extract deeper insights from the information they collect about their operations so they can make better business decisions informed by data, not just their intuitions and rules of thumb.
At the same time, Isaac is preparing to introduce AI-driven fleet management features to unlock new efficiencies, starting with new fuel-saving measures.
CEO Jacques DeLarochellière has positioned the implementation of AI as an opportunity for fleets to improve their management practices and gain a competitive advantage in the freight market.
“AI will not replace humans,” he said. “People using AI will replace people who don’t.”
The truck telematics solutions provider presented the new features at its Horizon 2024 user conference, held October 21-23.
CEO Jacques DeLarochelliere discusses@isaac_telemetryThe European Union’s investments in artificial intelligence: “AI will not replace humans. People using AI will replace those who don’t. pic.twitter.com/MQNOR9J7v4
– Seth Clevenger (@SethClevenger) October 22, 2024
With Isaac Analytics, fleet customers will be able to access their operational data to identify opportunities to improve performance and reduce costs.
The cloud-based business intelligence platform provides detailed data and visualizations covering numerous indicators, including Isaac Coach driver performance results, critical events such as hard braking, driving time, engine idling, hours of service violations, asset utilization and fuel economy.
Isaac Analytics, available from November, also automatically identifies key trends in data to flag significant changes or highlight areas for improvement.
During a roundtable discussion, two fleet leaders shared their experiences piloting an early version of the analytics platform.
“Previously, you had to access various data interfaces,” said Matthew Campbell, manager of transformational excellence and analytics at Challenger Motor Freight. “This tool takes all the data points and consolidates, transforms, cleans and aggregates them into a single window. This alone is super powerful.
From left: Cody McClain of Tucker Freight Lines, Matthew Campbell of Challenger Motor Freight and JS Bouchard of Isaac Instruments discuss how fleets can use data analytics to improve their operations at the company’s user conference ‘Isaac 2024 in Dallas. (Seth Clevenger/Transportation Topics)
Cody McClain, vice president of safety and human resources at Tucker Freight Lines, said the idle time metrics were “a big eye-opener” for his company. Understanding engine idling at a terminal, for example, showed how well each site was implementing company initiatives.
Isaac also presented its AI Lab initiative aimed at customers who want to push the boundaries of data analysis using AI and machine learning.
AI Lab’s first feature is Isaac Fuel Equivalent, designed to create fairer and more accurate fuel efficiency assessments for trucks and drivers.
In addition to driver and vehicle performance, many other factors also affect actual fuel economy, including load weight and route terrain.
JS Bouchard, Chief Product Officer of Isaac Instruments, addresses conference attendees. (Seth Clevenger/Transportation Topics)
Fuel Equivalent leverages AI to adjust driver and vehicle fuel efficiency metrics to account for these many variables to provide an apples-to-apples comparison, said JS Bouchard, chief product officer of Fuel Equivalent. Isaac.
“Using AI, we modify the mpg (we adjust the miles per gallon) to account for load, weight and driver, so we can compare performance from one truck to another,” a- he declared.
This information could allow trucking companies to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of different vehicles in their fleet, which could inform their purchasing and equipment specification decisions or help them identify underperforming trucks that may be underperforming. have an underlying maintenance issue.
The driver-focused version of Fuel Equivalent could support driver coaching efforts and create more accurate and equitable scoring for performance-based incentive programs.
Bouchard also previewed two other AI Lab projects: one that tracks weight carried and road types and another that provides better visibility into traffic speeds on the network.
Isaac Instruments hardware on display at the company’s user conference in Dallas. (Seth Clevenger/Transportation Topics)
Initially, Isaac will make AI Lab available to a limited group of fleet customers to pave the way for broader deployments in the future.
The new capabilities are the first product features to come from Isaac’s in-house AI development team, which leverages the vast amount of data the company already collects through its in-vehicle technology.
“Data is rocket fuel for AI,” DeLarochellière said. “You need the right data.”
So far, Isaac has invested about C$10 million in its AI development efforts, he said.
Isaac is also actively developing AI for other use cases, including a driver retention model that predicts which drivers are most likely to leave an organization, giving fleets the ability to proactively meet these drivers to address any concerns before it’s too late.
In the future, the rise of AI will only increase the importance of cybersecurity and data privacy, DeLarochellière said, adding that Isaac’s customer data is managed in the United States and in Canada and not sent to servers located in hostile countries.
“Our AI models are trained by our engineers here,” he said. “It’s important.”
The event, which was Isaac’s first user conference in the United States, took place a few weeks before a French version of the program which will take place at the company’s headquarters in Saint-Bruno-De-Montarville, in Quebec.
Isaac, founded 25 years ago, built a large base of fleet customers in Quebec, then expanded its reach across Canada over the years before launching a concerted offensive into the U.S. trucking market in 2020.
Since then, the company has onboarded more than 50 U.S.-based fleet operators, including Heartland Express, Quality Carriers and Leonard’s Express, which rank 36, 51 and 85, respectively, on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of largest carriers. rental carriers in North America.
DeLarochellière highlighted the roller coaster of disruption and volatile freight market conditions that fleets have experienced during and after the pandemic.
“It’s been a tough four years, that’s for sure,” he said.
He highlighted Isaac’s stability and long-term commitment to serving the transportation industry in a technology market that has seen numerous mergers, acquisitions and company closures in recent times.
“Your partners have to be healthy for you to be healthy, and Isaac is healthy,” DeLarochellière said.
