On WTT, VP Tom Kroswek highlights the economic benefits of the Autonomous Relay Network.
Announcer 1
Let’s bring on Tom Kroswek he’s the Vice President, of Strategy and Business Development over at Locomation. Tom thank you for joining us on the show today.
Tom Kroswek
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Announcer 1
Every year now it seems like …
Tom Kroswek
Yeah, a very exciting time. So I don’t think I’m gonna provide anything as dramatic as what’s going on in the world but we’ll try.
Announcer 1
Yeah well I mean it seems like every year there’s some new inflection point that is aimed at changing everything, but the big thing, I want to ask you real quick though, I saw a picture of this truck up here. I saw this picture of this locomotion truck at Manifest and it looks absolutely stunning have you been inside one of these yet?
Tom Kroswek
Oh yeah absolutely I was actually at Manifest myself and these are our latest versions of our product and more to come.
Announcer 2
Very very cool you know as we talk about the technology and av and all that other kind of stuff coming in, but there’s benefits for it as it’s being developed. So we know you guys are working on autonomous relay convoy technology and bringing that to the market in the future here but tell us about what you’re doing right now with your customers to increase their capacity.
Tom Kroswek
Absolutely so you know my role is Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Locomation and what we’re doing is trying to exhibit the value propositions that our customers can achieve right now, just preparing for that autonomous technology in the future. And one of the ways we do that is our trucks are actually capable of operating 20 to 22 hours a day. But you have to kind of conceive the logistics and your operating model to support that activity because it’s not the way that a normal over the road trucking operation operates today so what we’ve been able to do is actually create a platform of our system that generates not only the routes that we expect these trucks to operate on but actually looks within a carrier’s freight mix and determines which orders and destinations are conducive for our technology and can actually work within the confines of today’s operation but also will work in the future. And actually by doing that we’re able to achieve five to seven percent operating savings through better equipment utilization as well as the elimination of empty miles and idling time.
Announcer 1
Tom can I ask you something though, like considering charging and those kind of things how do you keep these things moving for 20 hours a day?
Tom Kroswek
Well the way that we’re conceiving it is we’re creating a relay network, the and the length of haul is normally 500 miles for a length of haul and we’re deploying our drivers initially as split teams so the first driver would drive 10 hours and they’d actually control two trucks they’d be able to drive up to 500, maybe a little bit more in duration, and then after 500 miles of driving they’d swap positions with the follower driver. And we’d be able to achieve another 500 miles in operation so continuously throughout the day we’d be able to get a thousand miles worth of operation.
Announcer 2
Yeah so tom how far are we away from deploying this type of stuff?
Tom Kroswek
Well, we can actually optimize the routes today and we’re working with some of our customers as far as deploying the operating model in that configuration. The technology is expected to be deployed by the end o next year and in 2024 that can actually support it. So we’re building the operating model and the routing scenarios that support the autonomy when it comes on board. But again, we’re able to actually do that today within a customer’s current freight configuration.
Announcer 1
But how does it work so like how will the new operating model work when the fleet actually does deploy it’s great that we can save now but also planning for the future what does that look like?
Tom Kroswek
Well, so you know if you think about it. You know, autonomous trucking is actually, especially when you think about a hub model it’s almost like creating a brand new mode of transportation. So that line hall between the hubs will be what is operated with our autonomous technology. So we’re deploying that mode for that line haul operation and so what we integrate is the local activity with that line haul and we’re able to optimize all of it. So we can optimize the local activity, the line hall activity as well so that, We’re again achieving that opportunity to eliminate empty miles and the idling time
Announcer 1
Very interesting, hey thanks for the information, Tom. People want to learn more. Where do I send them to?
Tom Kroswek
They can go to locomation.ai or they can reach out directly to myself at tkros@locomation.ai
Announcer 1
Very cool thank you tom thanks for your time today we appreciate it
Tom Kroswek
My pleasure take care