F3 Tech in Action chat: Getting trailers to be increasingly smart

Skybitz’ Sackman: recent developments in Bluetooth technology are a big boost

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Breaking the bottlenecks with smart trailer technology

DETAILS: Customers are increasingly asking for their trailers to throw off data. Technology is catching up to that request. 

SPEAKER: Deborah (Debbie) Sackman is the Senior Product Manager for the Fleets division of SkyBitz. She is interviewed by FreightWaves Editor at Large John Kingston

BIO: Deborah (Debbie) Sackman is the Senior Product Manager for the Fleets division of SkyBitz, a Telular Ametek brand, where she is responsible for driving strategic direction, product solution planning, program development, and sales and support enablement for SkyBitz’s software, services and hardware solutions.  Prior to SkyBitz, Ms. Sackman worked for Savi Technology, and previous to that was Technical Director at the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer. Her experience ranges from full lifecycle application development on small to large enterprise projects, to establishing and managing helpdesk operations, to technology assessment and insertion, to IT/business strategic planning and execution, to product line management and sales support.  

KEY QUOTES FROM SACKMAN:  

“The challenge was the technology really wasn’t ready to support this concept of a smart trailer. All of the sensors were talking over different protocols using different methods. That meant that any system that was going to collect this information had to talk a lot of different languages.  Bluetooth Five technology has really changed that.”

“That set the stage for people like us to create a telematic product that forms the hub of that smart trailer technology.”

“After cargo, brakes and tires really come next for most carriers in terms of where they find the ROI from smart trailer technology.”

More articles by John Kingston

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.