Tech trends:

“Catch me if you can!”:
Truck security in the 21st century

by Rebekah Bovenmyer

A truck driver stops at a truck stop to fuel up and grab some dinner. After dinner she’s ready to get back on the road. She walks outside, but her rig is gone. It’s been stolen—and so have the computers the truck carries. She goes back inside to call her manager.

The thief, satisfied that he’s been undetected, heads to the dropoff point. He stays off the interstate and takes back roads instead. He doesn’t want to run into any cops.

But then the truck starts to slow down. He puts his foot on the accelerator, but nothing happens. He’s going slower and slower: 35…30…25…20…15…10…5. The truck is barely moving.

Up ahead he sees several police cars blocking the road. He thinks if he jumps out of the truck, he might be able to make a run for it.

He tries to open the door, but it’s locked. He can’t get out, and now the truck is stopped right in front of the police!

How did the police know where to stop the thief?

It was a combination of technology and communication.

The truck has a global positioning system (GPS) antenna attached to it that tells a computer back at headquarters where the truck is. The truck’s location shows up as a dot on a digital map.

Before the driver even started on her way, her route was put in the computer as coordinates on a map at headquarters. The coordinates built a rectangle around her route called a geo-fence.

When the thief drove the truck outside of the geo-fence, the computer sent an alert to the manager of the trucking company.

The manager then called the police in that city and told them where the truck was. The manager watched the truck move on the map for a minute and then suggested where the police could set up a roadblock.

A few minutes later, the police called the manager when they were in place on the road. The manager then locked the truck’s doors and started slowing down the truck using a computer hooked up to the truck’s brakes and doors.

The thief was caught quickly and safely. And then the truck driver got back on the road and delivered the computers—on time, even! (This is a fictional story, so everyone should end up happy, right?)

So, what’s the moral of our story?

“In a scenario like this, acting on the alert and immediately communicating with police is essential,” says Bill Anderson, director of Global Safety, Health and Security at Ryder System. “Technology by itself isn’t enough. If we don’t act fast enough we may only find an empty truck.”

If companies can slow down trucks and lock doors now, what will they be able to do in the future?

Anderson expects to see more video cameras in the cab of the truck that will go directly to a computer. There may also be more finger- and eye-scanning to start trucks or even open the doors. (And he should know. Ryder was named in the top 500 security operations by Security magazine.)

Anderson says, “Right now we use technology to detect what’s happening with the truck.  In the future, we’re moving towards theft prevention by preventing trucks from starting if they’re not supposed to or allowing the doors to open only where they’re supposed to be opened.”

Want to find out more about GPS? Check out this GPS resource from Iowa State University Extension (pdf file) .