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Is it hard to remember life before handheld mobile devices and even harder to imagine life without them?

Today, beyond calling, texting and even checking e-mail, we’re all using our phones and tablets for a growing number of reasons. In a hurry? “We have an app for that” say food and coffee vendors. Just place your order on a device and pick it up without slowing down. Need a last-minute gift, some household or office supplies? No need to stop at the store. Use the app on your phone and your order will be delivered, even on the same day in some cases.

We’re a mobile society. As we approach the end of this decade, mobility means no longer being tethered to a desk. From the dock to the coffee shop or at a truck stop, trucking mobile apps are changing the ways of our workforce.

Mobile technology has changed the world.

Perhaps Pete Townshend, lead guitarist for The Who, is more of a visionary than many of us might have believed. Townshend’s 1971 hit “Going Mobile” celebrates the power of cutting ties to everyday hassles and heading out on the road. If we didn’t know any better, we might have assumed he worked at a trucking company:

How often do you send freight to the wrong location? How much money are you losing due to inaccurate weights? How do you measure a dock workers’ efficiency? How many OS&D claims do you make, and how many are successful? How much paper work does an average dock worker process in a day?

No one in the trucking industry likes trucks that aren’t moving. After all, an idle truck isn’t generating revenue. An idle truck, in fact, is only generating costs.

Keeping your vehicles on the road by ensuring that proper and timely fleet maintenance is performed is the main mission of your maintenance operation. When a truck breaks down - something we all know will happen at times - getting it up and running quickly can present an even bigger challenge.

In a perfect world:

-- Trucks run flawlessly until company leadership decides to replace them

-- Fleet managers spend their time analyzing data to increase profits

-- And technicians, well, technicians would probably spend their time training for another line of work.

Communication breakdown

It's always the same

I'm having a nervous breakdown

Drive me insane!

People on the front lines of transportation companies used to be tethered to workstations in the office, truck, dock and maintenance bay.