Truck fleet operators around the country are equipping their trucks with state-of-the-art tracking systems that allow customers to quickly see where those trucks are as they travel across the nation with freight.

“But what about the owner-operators?” asked Paul Kazan, founder and president of Target Interstate Systems, which is located on the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx, NY. “They aren’t putting these expensive systems on their trucks. They know where their truck is. They are in it.”

And he said, it is the independent owner-operator that still forms the backbone of truck transportation for the fresh produce industry. Kazan said the answer is in the Smart Phone that virtually everyone owns today. Target has experimented with a couple of different apps that can track the truck’s location through an iPhone or other Smart Phone. Almost every parent with a teenager has explored these apps. If your kid’s Smart Phone is so equipped, you can instantly tell where they are… maybe at the mall, rather than school.

Kazan said the same concept works for truck drivers. “We can send them a text asking if they will participate. They can hit ‘Y’ (for yes) at the beginning of the trip to turn it on and ‘No’ at the end of the trip to turn it off. It works very well.”

And with business picking up, Kazan said it is very important to be able to follow the progress of the trucks you have arranged for your customers. Since January, he said there does appear to be more business, and perhaps it is a sign of the economy turning around.

The veteran truck broker said hauling produce can be a fickle business. “People say that you have to eat so we (in agriculture) don’t feel it but that’s not true. There was an economic doldrums. You have to remember produce is an impulse buy. Nobody tells their wife they are going to store to buy some plums.”

He said when consumers get in an economic pinch that frozen product can work as well as the more expensive fresh items. “When you get to a certain (economic) point, Birdseye Broccoli starts looking like a good value.”

For its part, Target Interstate has helped by hiring a handful of new employees over the past several months throughout its network of offices. Kazan said it is a combination of new business as well as increased business with existing customers.

Headquartered at Hunts Point, Target Interstate specializes in loads to stops on the I-95 corridor between Baltimore and Boston. Much of the business comes from the big produce growing areas in California and Florida, but the company’s founder said he has also increased the amount of business he is getting from shippers in Texas and the Northwest.