Gone are the days when Trucker Buddy could pop some pills, drive for three days straight, then hole up for 24 hours of frolic at the Friends and Lovers Motel.

With new, made-in-Canada technologies, he’ll get in big trouble if he so much as makes an unscheduled pit stop off his designated route.

“We can arrange it so that, if the truck is supposed to go from Edmonton to Calgary on the No. 2 highway, that’s exactly what it has to do,” says Curtis Serna, founder, chairman and CEO of Edmonton-based Safefreight Technology.

“We can also use ‘geofencing’ to make sure that a truckful of hazardous waste cannot go within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant.”

Safefreight Technology CEO Curtis Serna says new

Safefreight Technology CEO Curtis Serna says new

Cargo theft is estimated to be at least a $25-billion US problem in the U.S. alone, so trucking companies are very interested in finding ways to prevent it. Serna is convinced that his company’s system would have prevented the recent $2-million heist of a pair of trailers full of nickel in a Montreal suburb.

The heart of Safefreight’s technology is a patented system that stays in constant communication with a control centre, using several modes of communication.

The owner of the trailer can watch its progress on the Internet.

“If a truck goes somewhere it’s not supposed to,” Serna says, “an alarm is generated. We can track the truck, secure the cargo, even lock up the airbrakes. I guarantee you a truck driving with its airbrakes locked is going to get noticed – by the noise and the smell!”

Safefreight isn’t alone in the growing business of high-tech vehicle security. Calgary-based CSI Wireless makes the AssetLink line of products. They can track your valuables, including your new Jaguar or Maserati, anywhere there’s cellphone coverage.

Sales vice-president Phil Gabriel tells of a fellow whose car was stolen at a Rolling Stones concert in Montreal.

“We have the capability to sense when the car is started without the key being in the ignition,” says Gabriel. So, while grooving to Mick Jagger and friends, this fellow gets a call from the monitoring company that his Jeep Grand Cherokee is in motion when it’s supposed to be parked. They called the cops and the vehicle was recovered within 20 minutes.

“Speed of recovery is really important to insurance companies,” says Gabriel. “They know that the damage increases exponentially as time passes. In the first few minutes thieves might break some glass and damage your ignition, but within hours the car could be stripped of parts or smashed up in a joyride.” One area that has great potential for vehicle-tracking technology is the transport of hazardous materials. The U.S. government has new legislation that requires tank-trailer carriers with hazardous materials to have a security plan in place.

This plan must include measures to address unauthorized access and en route security.

The American Trucking Association warns truckers that their rigs could become tools for terrorists. In an advisory, the ATA writes: “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9-11 attacks, indicates that Al-Qaeda has actively considered large-scale terrorist operations involving the use of trucks as weapons of mass destruction to attack bridges.”

Beyond the onboard systems, trucks are also frequently involved in smuggling people, which the United Nations calls the “fastest-growing business for organized crime.”

Technology also makes good business sense in the back office of transportation companies. Calgary-based Trimac Corporation uses “middleware” from Vitria to drive down order processing costs. According to Vitria, Trimac has cut its costs “from the estimated $25 spent on traditional phone or fax orders placed through a dispatcher to about $5 per web order.”

They also found an improved ability to mesh with customer systems such as EDI and ChemXML. The end result is more accurate order processing, at lower cost.

Will these high-tech innovations start showing up in the family sedan? They already are.

Many high-end vehicles are sporting the OnStar system. This gizmo allows you to place a call from your car and ask for anything from an ambulance to directions to the nearest Italian restaurant. You can even get your car unlocked by remote control.

Interestingly, hobbyist/hacker types have apparently found a way to tap into your OnStar directly. So, for example, you can read its GPS signal without

paying the OnStar folks to tell you where you are.

Instructions for this modification, which probably voids your warranty, can be found at members.cox.net/onstar.

On a more sinister note, rental car firms have been installing GPS units on some of their vehicles since the mid-1990s, mostly to find them when they go missing.

But they can do other things, too.

Georgetown, Ont., grocer Yungsoo Son picked up a car from Payless Car Rental in San Francisco and took it on a 12-day trip. When he returned, the expected $259.91 bill had mushroomed to $3,405.05, due to the $1/mile surcharge for taking the vehicle out of California. An onboard GPS had tracked him every step of the way. Payless and Mr. Son are probably headed to court to resolve this. In another case, a GPS system ratted on a Connecticut driver and he was fined $450 US by the rental car company, not the police, for three instances of speeding, which the company defined as driving over 79 mph.

Even if you don’t rent cars, you may soon have a GPS in your car.

Ohio-based Progressive Casualty Insurance Company has patented a system that interrogates your vehicle every month, asking about miles driven, speed, and, of course, any crashes. It then calculates your monthly premium based on your actual driving history.

While systems such as this will be optional for a while, they may become de facto mandatory as premiums for unequipped cars go sky high. Privacy advocates are definitely not amused by all this chipping away of our historical Freedom of the Open Road.

With a GPS riding shotgun in your next vehicle, those trips to the Friends and Lovers Motel may indeed be a thing of the past, and not just for the truckers.

(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)