Over the past ten years, the U.S. has seen a rapid increase in freight movement into and across the country. Unfortunately, investment in the goods movement infrastructure has not kept pace, leading to freight congestion delays. This is especially true in the inter-modal arena where the growth rate of cargo container shipments that move from port, to a combination of rail and truck (often including rail to rail and multiple truck trips) has continued to rise rapidly. Freight delays can cause significant problems for shippers of perishable goods and recipients of manufacturing components that rely on just-in-time operations for profitability. Tracking of freight movement through the system can provide valuable data for logistics analysis and can be used to enhance the security of goods transported. However, when freight movement is inter-modal, it is not easy to track the movement of the goods through each mode, as shippers typically use different technologies and systems for monitoring the movement, if they are monitoring at all, and the resolution of the data can differ significantly across modes. This paper documents the development of a GPS based instrument (GT freight data collector) suitable for tracking trailers and containers that travel across the continental US across different modes. The paper also demonstrates the usefulness of these data in visualizing of the spatial data collected for use in preparing transportation performance measures. A trailer transporting Sorbitol from Decatur, IL to Atlanta GA on a truck was monitored with the first generation GT freight data collector. Researchers then monitored a shipment of Mayonnaise from Decatur, IL to Fresno, CA using the second-generation GT freight data collector as the container moved from truck to rail and back to truck. The paper evaluates performance measures such as delay, temperature and humidity inside the container, inter-modal transfers, and speed acceleration profiles for truck transport using the data from the GT freight data collector.
Abstract