Aifleet co-founder and CEO Marc El Khoury spoke with FreightWaves about emerging technology in trucking at the Enterprise Fleet Summit on Wednesday. (Photo: FreightWaves)
This fireside chat summary is from FreightWaves' Enterprise Fleet Summit, held on Wednesday.
Fireside Chat Topics: New technologies in fleet management
detail: Marc El Khoury, co-founder and CEO of aifleet, a technology-driven trucking company with about 200 employee-drivers, and Brielle Jaekel of FreightWaves discuss the so-called driver shortage and how El Khoury's company is using its proprietary AI technology to increase driver utilization.
Key Quotes El Khoury:
Regarding driver maintenance: “Our objective is to optimize assets, optimize drivers, enrich their lives, automate as much of our operations as possible and serve our customers in the most efficient way possible.”
On the so-called driver shortage: “The question of whether there is a driver shortage is really not a driver shortage issue, but a retention issue, including the fact that large trucking companies are hiring tens of thousands of drivers a year, yet only about 5,000 drivers remain.”
On his predictions for the trucking industry over the next few years: “Industry-wide, I'm hopeful that we'll see a little bit of a balance between supply and demand and at least some sort of recovery, or that trucking companies will be able to at least recoup their costs and continue to survive and hopefully thrive. As a more general prediction going forward, I think trucking is probably at a tipping point where technology can finally have an impact. I think there's been a lot of investment made across the industry.”
