Penske Truck Leasing customers are getting access to an artificial intelligence platform called Catalyst AI, the company told Trucking Dive.
The platform provides metrics for fleets to assess their performance, comparing data to similar fleets to help optimize and better understand operations, according to the company. With the platform, AI-powered models can improve trucks’ MPG and utilization, Penske said.
The value add-on is available through Penske’s Fleet Insight digital tool.
The platform leverages advanced machine learning algorithms and live Penske data collection involving hundreds of thousands of vehicles, the company said on its website and a news release. The platform can also provide customized operational key performance indicator benchmarks.
“Catalyst AI runs 300+ models simultaneously to calculate the score or the ‘DNA’ of the fleet,” Penske said in a statement to Trucking Dive. “The attributes are weighted. As the platform continues to run the models and learn from the data — the weights on the attributes will shift. This is one of the ways the AI platform continues to learn.”
The company developed the project for little over a year based on Penske seeking to help customers better understand their performance, SVP of Digital and Customer Data Ann Walsh told Trucking Dive in a video interview. The platform learns from data and curates comparison groups on the fly, she said.
“What's out there today are fairly standard industry benchmarks,” Walsh said. “However, to come up with a similar fleet composition to come up with how you're operating your fleet, where you're running your fleet, all of those things make your fleet unique.”
A standard benchmark group can limit visibility, but Catalyst AI can rapidly create — in contrast to the slower reality of human calculations — information for fleets to absorb, Walsh said.
“It does things that no human could do,” Walsh said. “Or if a human could do that, it would take them quite some time. It would not be on the fly.”
An early access program allowed customers to the platform, and they’re “already actively making decisions, based off of the insights that we've provided, starting to formulate certain policies around idling, starting to evaluate how they are utilizing their equipment,” Penske VP of Customer Success & Fleet Telematics Samantha Thompson said. For example, Thompson said the platform can help fleets better answer questions such as:
- What's good idle versus bad idle?
- Are we measuring all idle equally?
- How are these dynamics impacting our operation?
Sherry Sanger, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for Penske, said in the news release that the technology “enables businesses to unlock new efficiencies, reduce costs, and ultimately, sets a new standard for fleet performance.”
