Fueling innovation. Technology is transforming the transportation and supply chain industries. From fleet management to fuel economy, Penske’s Catalyst AI provides businesses with the data and insights needed to streamline operations. Powered by 57b datapoints, Catalyst AI helps leaders understand where their business excels—and what needs improvement. Learn more.
When you hear the name Penske, what do you picture? Yep, those iconic yellow trucks are still rolling down a highway near you, but we recently found out there’s a lot more to Penske than just trucks.
On May 29, Tech Brew hosted Power Shift at Studio Gather by Tishman Speyer at Rockefeller Plaza.
Featuring conversations on the intersection of energy and transportation—and a crowd full of execs, industry leaders, and up-and-coming professionals—Morning Brew Inc.’s own Kyle Hagge chatted with Samantha Thompson, VP of customer success and fleet telematics at Penske Transportation Solutions.
They discussed how a company best known for its trucks is innovating fleet tech with AI. Here’s what you missed.
The fleet management challenge
The conversation kicked off with a chat about the realities of fleet management. Thompson explained to the crowd that to effectively manage a fleet, businesses need access to a lot of data. The bigger the fleet, the more data required to stay on top of operations.
This means most of the Penske brand is invisible, even with over 419k pieces of equipment on the road. The company moves more than 21.5m shipments per year, and the logistics side of the business (aka the trucks hauling coffee beans and groceries from loading docks to local shops) drives more than 560m miles annually. When you consider consumer and commercial truck rentals, these miles climb into the billions every year.
Penske needs access to every piece of data to maintain and support its fleet as it drives up and down, back and forth across North America. Now AI is entering the mix and providing new insights about that data.
AI’s revving up transportation
Next, the conversation shifted to the transportation industry’s relationship with new tech. Data continues to drive the transportation industry forward, even if it’s a little slow to adopt new tools.
Penske’s research found that 93% of transportation decision-makers believe AI will improve their business’s resilience. Here’s the catch: 84% of respondents reported that the industry is behind on adopting AI.
Thompson said she’s found that because people don’t understand AI, they’re reluctant to adopt it if they’re afraid it will replace them at work. This thought was met with a lot of agreement from the crowd—it’s a common misconception as AI picks up steam.
But the reality is less scary. Thompson predicted that AI will become a table-stakes skill, like using spreadsheets or confidently navigating digital platforms. AI may not replace you in your job, but humans who understand and know how to use AI might.
“When my team is talking to our customers about the AI we’ve leveraged [at Penske], we have to demystify it first, and we have to educate them,” Thompson said. “Then we can talk about what it can do for them.”
Meet Catalyst AI
Speaking of what AI can do in the transportation space, our panelists took this opportunity to dive into Penske’s Catalyst AI, a robust decision engine powered by 100b+ datapoints operating behind the scenes to help identify unique fleets and locate similar businesses to create benchmarks.
These benchmarks help businesses ditch annual aggregated data reports and generate a big-picture view of how they stack up within the industry in real time—for the first time.
As in other industries, leaders in transportation have found that “information is great, data is better, but insights—and more importantly, actionable insights—are the sweet spot for businesses,” Thompson said.
But with 100b+ datapoints to reference, it would be easy for insights to become overwhelming instead of helpful. To mitigate information overload, Penske designed Catalyst AI to take a human-centered approach to breaking down the data. Catalyst AI shows where businesses excel and where they’re falling behind so they can make smarter decisions as they grow.
Hitting the road
The transportation industry is facing a number of serious challenges, with driver shortages, fuel costs, and sustainability pressures topping the list for Thompson. These challenges are forcing businesses to take a look at their operations and fine-tune their processes.
Thompson shared that Penske customers have started to use Catalyst AI to tackle one of transportation’s most pressing issues.
We’re talkin’ fuel economy. Customers are using Catalyst AI to track fuel efficiency and utilization on a fleet-wide scale. When you think of fuel economy in transportation, the first thing that comes to mind is idling. In addition to being fuel-inefficient, idling is harmful to the environment.
But Thompson explained that fuel economy is affected by more than just idling. The age of your fleet and how well the fleet is maintained has an impact on fuel economy, too. With Catalyst AI, customers can compare how their fleet performs relative to those of their peers. And if the fleet is underperforming, Penske can step in to help get it back into shape.
Next stop: Efficiency
Hagge wrapped up the chat with Thompson by asking how she thinks the increased efficiency of technology and transportation could affect the economy over the next 15 years.
“What a question,” Thompson laughed. “I can tell you that transportation is absolutely integral to the economy. How do we make ourselves more productive, more sustainable, more efficient? I think technology will absolutely be key to that…The more operational efficiency we have within transportation and supply chain(s), the better for the economy and the world. Transportation supply chains run the world.”
Couldn’t have put it better ourselves. Simply put, technology and transportation work better together, and AI can help increase efficiency in the industry.
Interested in checking out the full event? Stream our chat with Penske and a full lineup of other industry leaders at Tech Brew’s Power Shift.