• Short line restores service to Minnesota line after two-year shutdown (10/14/2002)

8/14/2015

Asplundh Railroad Division: GPS-based Automatic Vehicle Management System

Asplundh Railroad recently deployed a GPS-based Automatic Vehicle Management System (AVMS) in all of its vehicles for safety, productivity and better customer service.

AVMS uses a GPS receiver and a modem installed in each vehicle to collect and transmit data every 15 seconds on truck location, engine start and stop times, and auxiliary motor usage. This and other operational data is sent to a central server every two minutes, and uploaded into a visual display that system users can access via tablet or smartphone. This allows supervisors to “see” mobilized crews in real-time and track their movements over time.

The company now can provide customers with a distilled version called AVMS Live so that its tree and spray crews can be seen in relation to tracks and other geographical features. AVMS Live users can click on a vehicle icon to get its truck number, name of operator, speed and direction, address and — most important for spray trucks — whether the center, left and right spray nozzles are in operation, the company says. This data can be collected to document where herbicides were sprayed, and at what date and time, to aid in post-treatment inspections and quality control. Asplundh Railroad will be exhibiting at Railway Interchange 2015 in Booth 5411.