July 26, 2017 Vol. 14 No. 15

Thirty years is a tiny dot on the map of our world’s history if you take an eagle’s-eye view of things. Really tiny. Downright infinitesimal. Yet for those of you who have lived through these last three decades in the trenches of trucking, the changes we’ve seen in what really is a very short span are anything but tiny.

Man, we’ve come a long way in 30 years.

I raise the matter because we’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the mother ship to this newsletter, Today’s Trucking magazine. Along with four other guys, one of whom had money and experience while the rest of us just had the experience bit, we published our first issue as the July/August 1987 edition. It wasn’t pretty but we were on the map, and within three years we were top dogs. Other magazines followed in our little company, Highwaystar among them, but I retain a soft spot for the one I built so many years ago.

Anyway, self-congratulations aside, this birthday caused me to look back.

WHOLE BOOKS COULD BE WRITTEN on the technology of trucking in the last 30 years, but there were two key developments around ’87 that have had a particularly profound effect: electronic engines and satellite communications. The digital future was being born.

The satellite tether would upset drivers, I feared at the time — Big Brother and all that. But while some saw it that way, most long-haul drivers welcomed the connection to home base. No longer alone on the road in the same way as before, no more lining up for minutes and minutes on end at truckstops to talk with dispatch, their lives were transformed. Even if at first drivers only had access to brief canned messages, it wasn’t long before things opened up. And then, of course, there was the cellular revolution many years later.

Electronic engine controls were on the scene in 1985, if I remember correctly, led by Detroit Diesel and its DDEC system. Mistrusted by all and sundry at the time, they didn’t have an especially auspicious start in my eyes. In fact my first road test of a DDEC engine was a bit of a disaster.