Isaac Instruments is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to bring new data products to its customers, which the company says will provide operational improvements and a quick return on investment.

One of these is Isaac Analytics, which was previewed at last year’s user conference and after successful beta testing will be rolled out to its broader customer base in early November.

“This is not a prototype,” said Olivier St-Amand, director of AI, machine learning and data science. “We’ve been working with 12 fleets, starting more than a year ago.”

Isaac Analytics will give fleets actionable data on key metrics via a single dashboard and a weekly email that highlights the five most urgent and actionable issues to address. Its 360 Insights portal provides insights into: Isaac Coach scores; critical events; drive time; idle time; hours of service violations; asset distance per day; sitting assets; and fuel economy.

The user can drill down into each of those categories by terminal, fleet manager, or driver, to see if they are meeting customizable key performance indicators set by the fleet. Isaac Analytics will be bundled into Pro subscriptions at no extra cost, but fleets can – for a fee – have up to two years of prior data pre-loaded, giving them immediate year over year comparisons.

Kyle Niiya, business intelligence analyst for Isaac Instruments, said testing with those 12 initial customers covered more than 8,500 trucks and 11,000 drivers. They collectively generated 1 billion miles and consumed 147 million gallons of diesel, 5.2 million gallons of which were burned while idling longer than five minutes.

About 1.2 million critical events were recorded across 21 million driving hours, with 149,000 hours of service violations recorded. The breadth of data collected during the one-year pilot gives Isaac Instruments useful data against which fleets can benchmark.

When it goes live in early November, it will be included in Isaac InRealTime Version 5.12.

Some of the early test fleets gave rave reviews.

“The biggest benefit I see from this platform is the consolidation of the rich data Isaac has,” said Matthew Campbell, manager of transformational excellence and analytics with Challenger Motor Freight. “We previously had to go into various data interfaces. This tool is taking all the data points and consolidating, transforming and cleansing it and putting it into a one-stop shop, and that alone is super powerful.”

Cody McClain, vice-president of safety and human resources said he’s not a “big data guy” and so simplicity and ease of use were key. It allowed him to quickly identify low hanging fruit – such as excessive idle time – that could be immediately addressed, and which the company previously didn’t realize was an issue.

“The long idle time was a big revelation for me,” he said. “Some terminals were reacting and some weren’t, to some company initiatives and that was my first a-ha moment that got me diving in to see what else is happening.”

The platform also led him to evaluate, based on data, whether auxiliary power units (APU) were providing a payback and having the desired effect on idle time.

At Challenger, the big focus was on driver performance. The data will enable both companies to reevaluate how they build their incentive programs so they are applied more equitably to all drivers across the fleet.

The AI Lab and Fuel Equivalent

Also coming out in early November is Isaac’s AI Lab, the first feature of which will be Fuel Equivalent. It’s a tool that eliminates all the variables affecting fuel economy so that fleets can measure true vehicle and driver fuel economy performance.

Factors such as ambient temperature, road elevation and curvature, weight and road type are considered using machine learning, and their impact removed from the equation. The results are eye-opening, revealing actual mpg is not a true barometer of truck and driver performance.

Niiya gave a demonstration to truck media attending the user conference. In one instance, he showed a comparison between unnamed OEMs within a fleet. One OEM had an actual fuel economy of 7.8 mpg while another’s was 6.8 mpg. But using Fuel Equivalent, the 7.8 mpg OEM actually achieved 7.2 mpg while the other achieved 7.4, indicating the second OEM was actually the better performer.

The same can be done with drivers. Fleets will have the opportunity to better reward drivers for their performance based on Fuel Equivalent’s analysis, even if they haul different freight out of different terminals, using different types of trucks.

This is particularly helpful for fleets with various segments; a team driver in a reefer fleet who runs a mountainous route can be accurately scored against a city driver who hauls lightweight freight in a truck with a different spec’.

Fleets will be able to better deploy the best units for a certain type of freight or lane.

McClain said it’s an analysis his fleet has been trying for years to achieve on its own. He’s excited about getting an apples-to-apples comparison of drivers and trucks within the fleet, information he can use as leverage when ordering new trucks.

“We’ll have some ammunition to negotiate with some of the OEMs,” he said. “We have a great relationship with our OEMs, but it doesn’t mean we don’t want to have something else to go into that discussion with.”

He said it will also allow the fleet to evaluate the economics of purchasing used rather than new trucks and will allow it to fine-tune its spec’s.

Isaac’s chief product officer, Jean-Sebastien Bouchard, said measuring hauled weight was key to enabling the new feature. He anticipates fleets will also be able to more accurately price jobs since they’ll have a truer view of their operating costs. In slow times, they will be able to park the least efficient trucks, and when in growth mode, better select the truck make and spec’ for the application it’ll be put into.

“Today, a lot of this is done with gut feel,” he said.

He is so confident Fuel Equivalent will save fleets money and improve profitability, that he says a fleet that effectively utilizes it will get a return on investment from the entire Isaac Instruments platform in no more than a year, thanks to that feature alone.

The Isaac AI Lab and its first feature, Fuel Equivalent, will be rolled out gradually beginning after the French language user conference in November to ensure a smooth rollout.

Bouchard says all this did not come cheap. Isaac has invested close to $10 million in its AI capabilities in recent years, he said.