WHG’s ground-breaking industry and stakeholder event series, TechDRIVE, once again came to Melbourne last week to accelerate fleet technology conversations across safety, productivity, efficiency and autonomy.
Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia fleet technology and telematics members Logmaster and Allotrac were joined by truck manufacturers Daimler Trucks Australia, Volvo, vehicle rental service provider TR Group, and national dealer CMV Truck & Bus, who each took on exhibiting and speaking roles throughout the event’s program.
HVIA’s Chief Engineer Rachel Michaud chaired the ‘From AI to Automation’ panel, which explored connected fleets, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles. MCM’s Katharina Attana, Allotrac’s Matt Griffiths, Ramco System’s Daniel Adamek, DHL’s Kasi Kolla and WHG’s Dylan Hartley all shared their expertise and experience which is directly relevant to the transport and heavy vehicle industry.
There was no doubt in the room that AI is one of the fastest developing technologies we’ve seen to date, and that adoption of it into multiple areas of transport businesses is essential to productivity and ensuring the sustainability of businesses moving forward.
It was also acknowledged that AI is being used to unlock automation of processes which were traditionally manual such as using AI assistants in customer service, utilising AI to review process flows and find efficiencies, or the capability to take photos of handwritten documents and have them converted to digital form in seconds.
After many of the panellists explained some of these common uses, HVIA Chief Engineer Rachel Michaud was quick to challenge the audience, “If anyone in the room is still manually transposing typed documents into spreadsheets, please stop now.”
After the morning break, HVIA Chief Technical officer Adam Ritzinger chaired the ‘Future Fleet Strategy’ panel, which saw WHG’s Dylan Hartley, Daimler Truck Australia’s Romesh Rodrigo, CMV Truck & Bus’s Joe Di Santo, and Ten-League’s Adam Wakefield take the stage.
“Our impressive line-up of panellists covered technology, workforce and data – three broad but crucial themes that fleet managers need to contend with if they are going to get ahead in 2027 and beyond,” Adam says.
“The conversations around threats and opportunities were particularly insightful, and really highlighted the value in TechDRIVE, which draw on broad expertise from a wide range of transport industry leaders and experts.”
Since launching in 2023, WHG’s TechDRIVE series has gone from strength to strength, and has become a regular feature in Australia’s national transport events calendar across Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.