The Sky's the Limit

He lets down his guard all at once. "Imagine," he says, "the end of property crime. Everything that has any value and could be stolen -- a car, a laptop, a piece of construction equipment" (not to mention every ship, plane, truck trailer, and toddler) -- "everything like that will know its location and be able to report it. We can go even further: You tell your laptop that it should only find itself at your office or your home. And if it finds itself in a car trunk, it wakes up, notices that it's in the wrong place, calls your cell phone, and says, 'Hi, this is your laptop. I'm at this location on this map you see. Is that okay?' "

Then the executive goes one step further. He starts talking about insurance companies selling you auto insurance based on how you actually use your car, say, a month at a time. They review the GPS information on where you've driven, how far, to what areas of town, and how fast (speeding, eh?) and bill you for the risks that you're taking. Progressive Insurance has in fact done a trial using just such a system in Texas.

The GPS executive's eyes are sparkling at the prospect of reduced car-insurance rates. I'm thinking, Holy mackerel. The insurance company will have records of everywhere I drive and how fast I drive there. Not even my wife knows that.

"If You Took Away My GPS, I'd Be in a World of Pain"

It's a little past noon in the utterly ordinary offices of a space-age trucking company called Con-Way NOW. This is the sort of place that regular people never even suspect exists. When companies need something big moved quickly, they call an outfit like Con-Way NOW, a unit of transportation giant CNF, which operates 41,000 trucks, tractors, and trailers.

Con-Way NOW, just seven years old, is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan (N 42? 12.964', W 83? 43.983', elevation 914 feet above sea level, 6 satellites reporting, to an accuracy of 18'). With only about 350 trucks, it is still a tiny part of CNF. The whole operation is built around a simple guarantee: When you call Con-Way NOW and book a shipment, that shipment will arrive at the time promised, whether it's going across the state or across three time zones. In the trucking business, it's called "time-definite delivery." If the shipment is more than two hours late, it's half price. If it's more than four hours late, it's free. GPS makes the whole thing possible. Con-Way NOW knows where every truck is, all the time. Not roughly where every truck is, but where every truck is to within less than one-tenth of a mile. When an order comes in, a dispatcher punches a computer function labeled FIND NEAREST, and a list of trucks comes up, displaying a full array of detailed information on the status of each of them.

If a truck is running more than 15 minutes late, or if a truck strays off route by more than 200 feet, a satellite system provided by Qualcomm notices and sends dispatchers an alert. Con-Way NOW says that it has only had to compensate customers for late shipments on less than 1% of orders.

Amy Burgess, a customer coordinator at Con-Way NOW, takes a call. "Amy, this is Brenda," says a breathless woman. "I've got a very hot expedited shipment that needs to be in Pennsylvania tomorrow." Brenda rat-a-tat-tats out the details: a 158-pound item on a single skid. Yes, it will fit in a cargo van. "It'll be ready for pickup before 3:30," Brenda says. "It needs to arrive ASAP tomorrow."

Amy's computer reports the distance from Horton, Michigan to Hazleton, Pennsylvania -- 546 miles. That's 12 hours, 8 minutes driving time, according to the computer. Amy puts Brenda on hold and consults a dispatcher, Marissa. Marissa has a cargo van that will be able to pick up in Horton at 3:30 PM. Delivery time? How's 4 AM for ASAP? Total cost for the ride: more than $800.

Brenda doesn't have a contact at the destination, but she books the shipment and promises to call back with the contact information. Before Brenda can call back, Amy has found the Pennsylvania company on the Internet, run a credit check, talked to a man at the company named John, and been told that a 4 AM delivery is a bit too ASAP. "Seven-thirty will be fine," John says. "That's when receiving opens."

Within 15 minutes of Brenda's initial call, everything is done. The driver has received the job and confirmed his acceptance and his pay (roughly $450 for driving all night) -- all messages bounced back and forth off of birds in orbit. Amy has called the shipping company back. The final thing she says, at half past noon, with the quiet confidence of an air-traffic controller: "Brenda, that truck is 67 miles out. Less than two hours." She could even have told Brenda the van's speed.

"If you took away my GPS," says Michelle Potter, Con-Way NOW's vice president of operations, "I'd be in a world of pain." This service might not be feasible at all without GPS.