Up in the sky! It’s a bird.it’s a plane.it’s.the satellite your driver just used to check in! While many fleets still rely on time-consuming stops so drivers can queue up at a pay phone to make their check-calls to dispatch, more fleets are using communication systems that instantaneously relay incoming and outgoing messages-voice or data-via satellite while the truck is on the move.

Satellite-based communications systems typically offer widespread and uninterrupted coverage, which is highly desirable when you’re trying to keep in touch with trucks and drivers scattered all over North America. Interest among fleets of modest size has picked up as entry costs diminish and the technology has become proven and more widespread. Likewise, satellite communications service providers are eager to tap into the bigger market of smaller fleets.

Players in the field typically use one or more of three basic types of communication-satellite orbital configurations.

Geosynchronous satellites (GEO) stay in the same relative position over a spot on earth at a distance of about 22,500 nautical miles, giving you a huge but unchanging coverage footprint. Mid-earth orbiting (MEO) satellites work as a network or “constellation” placed closer to the earth, such as the renowned GPS (Global Positioning System) net of 26 satellites orbiting 10,900 miles out. GPS can determine the location of a transmitter-equipped truck to within 300 feet for civilian applications.

Constellations of low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites are positioned much closer to earth, at about 400 to 540 miles altitude. These allow vehicles to have much simpler antennas and lower-powered transmitters to access them.

“Another benefit of satellites to trucking firms is that you can deal with one service provider for pretty well all of North America,” says Carey Healey, director of product development at B.C.-based Infosat Telecommunications, a national sales representative for TMI Communications and Iridium Canada, two satellite communications companies. “To handle a similar area using cellular, you might have to deal with a dozen different companies.”

One of the first providers of satellite-based communication for tracking vehicles was San Diego-based Qualcomm, which is represented in Canada by Cancom Tracking Solutions in Mississauga, Ont.

Qualcomm’s OmniTracs product was introduced back in 1988. The driver uses a handheld keypad and display to type or read messages that are relayed via a transponder mounted to the vehicle.

The company’s initial target was large fleets. Now, companies like mid-sized truckload and LTL carrier Big Freight Systems of Steinbach, Man., are signing up. Big Freight has equipped 300 vehicles with OmniTRACS in a little over two years. Equipment tracking is a key benefit, but another payoff is the ability to reach the driver in an instant. “We might have a truck just departed with 12 feet of space left in the trailer,” says Big Freight MIS project leader Louis Charriere. “If a last-minute call comes in from a nearby client who has a load that would fill that unit, we can immediately contact the driver and route him to do the pick-up.”

The driver isn’t the only one you can reach. Qualcomm’s JTRACS module gathers critical data from the engine’s electronic control unit and can beam it to company headquarters. For instance, Charriere can tell if a driver is idling excessively if the system reports that the engine is on but the truck isn’t moving. He can tell the driver to cut down on idle time-or remotely program the engine to do it for him.

This year’s hot ticket is CabCARD, a pre-paid service providing discounted long-distance phone rates, voice-mail capabilties, and driver e-mail. E-mail can be sent and received directly from the cab of the truck using the OmniTRACS unit.

Other Providers

Qualcomm isn’t the only satellite-based communications service provider in Canada. Last November, Orbcomm Global-a group of communications companies that includes Montreal-based TeleGlobe-started routing signals through its constellation of 28 LEO satellites. Through its network of resellers, Orbcomm can provide vehicle tracking and two-way messaging/wireless e-mail services on a global scale.

The difference between LEO and GEO service is price: Orbcomm says the LEO network is a less costly alternative.

TMI Communications of Ottawa (owned by BCE Inc.) owns and operates the MSAT-1 GEO satellite. MSAT provides mobile communications capabilities to three million people over 85% of Canada’s land mass who don’t have access to cellular service. TMI wholesales TAMS (TMI Asset Management Service), which allows tracking of any kind of land- or water-based vehicle via GPS reports. You can access current-location data for your equipment via TMI’s password-protected web site.

The thrust of TMI’s system is voice communications. It uses a handheld phone which sends the signal to the satellite, where it is beamed back to earth and across land lines to its final destination. The phones are “dual mode,” which means they can operate off either the MSAT or cellular networks. This lets you use the cellular service when you’re within a cellular coverage area and satellite only when you need it.

That’s important. Satellite phone service can cost anywhere from $2.75 to more than $7 a minute. The phones themselves cost between $4000 and $15,000.

BCE is also involved in Montreal-based Iridium Canada, a consortium that is marketing a dual-mode phone that uses a constellation of 66 LEO satellites to provide worldwide coverage for voice, data, fax, or paging activities. Iridium is targeting not only heavy cellular users who travel, but also customers who work in oil and gas extraction and other industries that involve isolated or remote locations outside of cellular coverage.

The service routes calls through land-based telephone systems when customers are within the coverage area of Iridium’s roaming partners.

Outside of these local cellular coverage areas, Iridium customers switch to the LEO network.

Managing the Data

No matter which communications network you choose, you need to have the systems in place to make use of the data you generate.

“When we recently implemented a satellite-based dispatching and load-tracking system, our operations here jumped from the Stone Age to the New Age in one leap,” reports Mark Alden, general manager of Muir’s Cartage, a Concord, Ont.-based LTL carrier. His company uses the FreightQuest package from Cummins Engine, which Alden describes as a GPS-based product that provides dispatchers with real-time visual displays of where each truck and load is located. The system is aboard 25 trucks as a test, and if it works out, the rest of the fleet’s 180 tractors will be similarly equipped.

“Our dispatching process had been strictly manual,” Alden relates, “and I wanted something that offered a lot more speed and efficiency but didn’t cost as much as some of the satellite-based systems I’d heard of.

“FreightQuest uses GPS signals that interface with the MobiTex data network, and our drivers have a simple handheld unit with them in the cab where they use a stylus to compose messages on an LCD window,” he says. “At the dispatch office, our staff can just drag-and-drop icons on their terminal screens to match loads with available vehicles, and the assignment message is automatically sent to that truck.”

There’s no voice capability, but incoming messages are read by the driver off the same screen. It’s easy for him to report in at each key point of his daily operation: arrival at the customer’s dock; time when loading or off-loading commenced; time when it was completed; and so forth. “That lets me cost-out a customer very quickly,” Alden adds.

The Muir’s fleet is also still equipped with two-way radios, but traffic jams can apply to frequencies as well as highways, and Alden says reception in the greater Toronto area especially has deteriorated in recent years.

That means drivers were still having to pull off and head for the pay phones, which can easily cost 20 to 30 minutes of valuable time.

“It’s too early yet to quantify productivity gains from the system, but the drivers love it.which was a bit of a surprise,” says Alden. “I thought there’d be a ‘Big Brother is watching me’ kind of reaction, but these people don’t like having to bother with phoning in all the time.”