National freight congress and transport expo, 8-10 September 1999

Road & Transport Research, Dec 1999 by Brindle, Ray

The 1999 National Freight Congress and Transport Expo, hosted by the Victorian Road Transport Association, was an impressive affair. Held over three days at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, it combined keynote addresses, tightly managed panel sessions, and associated events including a large industry exhibition.

The exhibition was well patronised (especially the racing car simulator) and featured a wide range of supplies, from logistical consultants and equipment manufacturers to makers of huge prime movers.

It was in the shadow of one of these that I found myself in earnest theological discussion with a young priest who was trying to sell me a raffle ticket-for the prime mover! I resisted the temptation. Well, what would you do with a Kenworth if you won one?

Sessions on day 2 typified the pace and quality of the conference. A discussion by a panel of logistics and operations managers at a ranger of industries outlined the expectations - and sometimes disappointments - of the customers of the freight industry. The usual performance measures of cost, reliability and so on received their expected attention, but it became clear from the panellists that these measures take different forms for different customers. The opportunities for a research contribution in this area seem substantial.

A session on the future outlook of technology in the freight industry involved a panel of speakers well known to many readers of this journal: Peter Sweatman, Ian Johnston, Jim Stevenson, Terry Pennington, Ken Daley and Tony Wilson. The applications of new technology to safety, productivity and environment concerns was illustrated in various ways, several speakers stressing the need for a more strategic approach. The application of technology in handling trade-offs, for example between fatigue and productivity, was noted. Two immediate questions were stressed: driver responses to technology which takes some of the driving control out of their hands, and the ownership of the information that new technology will gather.

A highlight was the session on driver fatigue. Australian and Canadian research was addressed, followed by a thoroughly interesting keynote address by David Dinges, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dinges said that typically between 5 and 20 percent of transport industry employees experience sleep apnea, presenting a need for a comprehensive management program which

identifies and treats apnea

provides adequate recovery periods for drivers

permits power naps in the work place, and

makes appropriate use of technologies.

Dinges cautioned that, of the 70 or more 'drowsy driver' monitoring technologies now available, only one has so far proved functional and reliable. Tests with various devices showed that drivers tended not to stop after fatigue alerts have been triggered, but they did drive more carefully. The behavioural mechanisms at work here will be the focus of future work. But even so, asked Dinges, 'is this a future time bomb?' He concluded that 'technology is not a substitute for setting functional standards for operators.'

But perhaps the most attention-grabbing presentation of the conference was by Dr. Stavros Karigannis, head of a Greek technology-based company which, he announced, had released an ingenious pallettracking device that can be embedded in any pallet and thus enable a company's pallets to be tracked anywhere in the world. It was an astounding breakthrough, and the freight operators in the audience were obviously excited. But the fact that it was a lunch-time address should have alerted us especially when Karigannis got most of the audience up on their feet doing Zorba's dance around their tables. The whole thing was a brilliant and plausible spoof, so the pallet-tracking device remains to be invented. Now there's an idea for the R and D division...