With a vision of bringing “trucks, trailers and goods online,” KeepTruckin continues to innovate and invest in technologies that improve the lives of drivers. CEO and co-founder Shoaib Makani talked to FreightWaves last week at the Great American Trucking Show, where KeepTruckin announced the newest addition to its platform, the Smart Dashcam.
“We’ve been in this market five years now, so while we’re a startup, there is deep experience on the team,” Makani said. A “cash-flow positive” company, KeepTruckin now employs over 800 people with headquarters in San Francisco and a growing office in Nashville, TN, and is the second most popular ELD device in terms of units operating, behind only Omnitracs, the CEO noted. “Thousands of fleets are switching to KeepTruckin each month and we’re bringing new products [to market].”
The latest is the Smart Dashcam for truckers. Available for free for customers participating in the Shifting Gears buyout program, the Smart Dashcam is a plug-and-play solution designed to improve safety. The dashcam integrates with the KeepTruckin Electronic Logging Device (ELD) solution to provide a single-source, hours-of-compliance and video intelligence platform in one package at a cost lower than similar product pairings.
“We firmly believe that integrated dash cams are the way forward to making roads safer,” Makani said. “The addition of our Smart Dashcam to the buyout program will make video intelligence more accessible to fleets and is the first step in seeing safety technologies as standard equipment across the trucking industry.”
The Shifting Gears buyout program offers qualifying carriers who switch to KeepTruckin’s ELD a credit to help offset the cost.
The Smart Dashcam records critical events such as hard braking, hard acceleration, or hard corners to provide fleet managers with transparency into events as they unfolded. All the videos are associated with the driver based on ELD data, giving managers additional insight into specific driver behaviors, rather than vehicle-based behaviors – especially helpful and time-saving for vehicles driven by multiple drivers.
The dashcam records continuously and whenever there is a critical event, the clip is uploaded to the cloud for retrieval. Makani told FreightWaves that a recall function will be added in the near future that will allow retrieval of any video clip – critical or not – within the past 3 days. Additionally, an optional driver-facing camera will be added later this year that will use video intelligence to record drowsy and distracted driving.
The Smart Dashcam simply plugs into the existing KeepTruckin ELD. “Our whole goal with this was to make it incredible easy,” Makani said. He added that the ELD mandate has actually opened the door for other products.
“The ELD mandate forced connectivity, even among the owner-operators,” Makani said. “For us, now that the groundwork has been laid, [we can build on the ELD].”
A prime example of this is the Smart Dashcam. Video provides huge benefits to fleets in terms of accident and driver exoneration and provides value to fleets of all sizes. The cost of a single accident can run hundreds of thousands of dollars, but video can provide the necessary protection against wrongful claims.
KeenTruckin’s Smart Dashcam costs $20 per vehicle, per month. Its ELD, which features no upfront costs, runs $30 per vehicle, per month.
“This tips the scales,” Makani said. “Fleets get it … and the proposition for owner-operators is the same. We’re seeing insurance costs come down for those using video.
“So, for $50 all in, you get compliance, telematics and video coverage,” he added.
The addition of video is another step in the evolution of KeepTruckin to fullfill Makani’s vision of bringing “trucks, trailers and goods online” through connectivity. This includes work that is ongoing with a “great team” of engineers and other top talent that the company has been able to attract. Makani said KeepTruckin is working on video intelligence solutions as well as trailer tracking and cargo sensors to name a few efforts.
“We’re investing in new technology; we’re investing in reliability; and we’re driving down cost,” he said. “We’re very much here for the long run and we’re going to keep solving problems for our customers.”