TruckX: Bringing Transparency, Visibility, and Efficiency to the Trucking Industry

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Tapan Chaudhari, Founder

While growing up, Mr. Tapan Chaudhari used to spend summers helping his grandfather in managing their 200 SqFt grocery store and his uncle with a used car dealership. This instilled in him an immense interest in businesses, and he strived to understand the various nuances of it.

As time passed by, the era of computers began, and Mr. Chaudhuri was mesmerized by its capability of streamlining business operations. He was 16 then and started writing computer programs for fun! In the later phase of his life, this passion enabled him to work for some of the biggest names in the cloud technology space and accumulate knowledge about real-life applications of technology.

At this time, he witnessed that the trucking industry, despite being one of the largest job sectors in the U.S. and an integral part of the American way of life, lacked adequate safety compliance solutions. As such, Mr. Chaudhuri decided to move the needle in the trucking industry by imparting his extensive technical knowledge and laid the foundation stone of TruckX five years back.

Since its inception, TruckX is driven by the mission of using the power of technology to bring transparency, visibility, and efficiency to the trucking industry. TruckX’s first sets of products were a range of Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) to help trucking companies comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulations without breaking a sweat. Later, the company began to offer cutting-edge IoT-driven solutions for fleet management and asset management. “Our solutions are making the lives of thousands of truckers simpler every single day,” asserts Mr. Chaudhari, Founder, TruckX.

Following is the conversation that CIO Applications had with Mr. Chaudhari to understand how TruckX has established itself as a leader in the trucking industry, how they are helping clients mitigate challenges, and how their ELD devices, asset tracking, and various sensors enable truckers to optimize operations.

In your interactions with leaders and owners of trucking companies, what sense do you get of the challenges they face now, and how is TruckX effectively addressing them?

Even before the pandemic hit, the trucking industry was subject to volatility due to a capacity glut that led to falling rates and sharply greater competition in 2019. The industry is also a victim of the vagaries of international oil price trends. Of course, those issues have always been around, and trucking companies do factor them into their plans. But after the FMCSA-imposed electronic logging device (ELD) mandate became the law late last year, trucking companies started facing a fairly new set of challenges.

Our solutions are making the lives of thousands of truckers simpler every single day

They had to quickly adopt technology into their core trucking operations in the form of ELDs. It also became their responsibility to familiarize drivers with technology for staying compliant with the Hours of Service (HOS) regulations. As a result, choosing the right technology, making the right vendor partnership, and providing driver training became major concerns for the players across the trucking industry. TruckX aims to make this process smooth, seamless, and painless, allowing drivers to focus on driving and the trucking companies on managing their business.

Of course, as the economy faces headwinds, the trucking industry feels the impact too. Now, trucking companies are worried about staying afloat and managing their customer relationships. They want to extract the maximum out of their fleets and minimize losses of any kind. To this end, we equip them with the latest IoT technology. Trucking companies are using our fleet management options to extract the optimum benefits of their invested capacity. Our asset management solutions and sensors enable them to track and ensure the safety of the goods that they deliver. As a result, they can manage their operations more efficiently and profitably.

How do TruckX’s ELD devices, asset tracking, and various sensors enable truckers to optimize operations?

ELDs are all about transparency and are necessary to adhere to stringent regulations as FMSCA has dictated trucking companies to rightly log the HOS of drivers. The aim is to enforce strict limits on how long truckers can drive in a bid to make the roads safer. The world is becoming much more data-driven, and this should apply to trucking too. The data ELDs capture can be used to deliver even greater business efficiencies to the trucking companies. They should be able to gain insights out of that data to more intelligently plan, budget, manage, and maintain their fleet operations. Compliance is a legal necessity, but we see this as an opportunity for trucking companies to derive additional benefits and open up new avenues of growth.

What are the strategies employed by TruckX to thwart market competition?

Instead of worrying about market competition, we always focus on customer satisfaction. Just like most of the trucking companies are family-owned, we started the same way. This helps us understand their business better. A few Silicon Valley companies providing ELD raised money and had to significantly scale back during this pandemic owing to the lack of a customer-centric approach. We, on the other hand, are bootstrapped without any external money, which allows us to focus on our customers. As such, we are growing more than 100% YoY.

According to stats, there are over 400 ELD vendors are in the market. But it’s been hard for trucking companies to find a vendor who is in it for the long haul. We are a technology company with a trucking heart. We are always working to drive the technology forward to address the real problems of the trucking companies. That’s why our clients—from individual owner-operators to large fleets with hundreds of rigs—trust us.

What does the future hold for your organization? Any footprint expansion plans or platform enhancement strategies that you can shed light upon?

TruckX started with the mission to become a go-to provider to help trucking companies successfully run their authority. We have worked hard to design the best possible ELD solution with the most easy-to-use and intuitive UI. Continuing with the mission, this year, we have significantly expanded by delivering a range of IoT-powered asset trackers and various sensors for complete fleet management.

The uptake for these products is already very encouraging, and we expect this to accelerate further as trucking companies seek to derive greater efficiency from their existing assets. We also have some exciting product development plans underway around cutting-edge devices that could cause a significant shift in the market when they do emerge.