Aim News

Last year, Aim Transportation Solutions earned some much-deserved industry buzz with the release of the game-changing Road Rescue feature on its official smartphone app, Aim Navigator. The state-of-the-art add-on streamlines and enhances the way Aim customer drivers request roadside service and how Aim’s Road Rescue team manages and responds to over-the-road maintenance calls. Today, Aim is proud to share that the Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ), a leading authority in the transportation industry, has named Aim its 2024 CCJ Innovator of the Year for the invention of this pioneering tool.

The CCJ Innovator of the Year recognizes companies within the commercial transportation industry that demonstrate exceptional innovation, efficiency and impact. Aim was joined by a class of other industry-leading fleets recognized by CCJ editors throughout 2023, including Ryder, FirstFleet, Solar Transport, Walmart, ArcBest, Brakebush Transportation, FedEx, Budd Van Lines, Averitt, DHL and Garner Trucking.

CCJ honored Aim with the Innovator of the Year award last week during its 20^th annual CCJ Innovators Summit in Key Largo, FL. This big-time annual event brings together current and past CCJ Innovators for an immersive three-day experience of networking, insightful presentations and the exchange of groundbreaking ideas among some of the trucking industry's most visionary fleets and top executives.

The brilliant minds behind Aim’s award-winning technology are Aim’s Chief Information Officer & Vice President of Technology, John Reed, and Aim’s Vice President of Software Development, Dan Kellgren. They, along with their extraordinary team of developers, project managers and quality assurance professionals developed the Road Rescue tool to better serve a rapidly diversifying truck driver workforce and deliver added value to Aim’s customers nationwide.

Pictured (l-r) are CCJ Senior Editor Pamella De Leon; Aim Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology John Reed; Aim Transportation Solutions Vice President of Software Development Dan Kellgren; and CCJ Senior Editor Angel Coker. Photo courtesy of CCJ.

“Receiving CCJ’s 2024 Innovator of the Year award is an incredible honor because it underscores our team’s, our organization’s and my commitment to pushing boundaries and finding new, inventive ways to leverage technology to better serve our customers and the industry,” said John Reed. “As the list of competition in contention for this award shows, there are a lot of big-name fleets doing incredible things, and us edging them out to earn this award just shows the exceptional level of talent, drive and commitment we have from the individuals who make up our amazing team, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

“This was a true team development effort: From our model designs, specs, and technology research and partnerships, to our front-end, back-end, mobile, and security layers, all aspects of our development talent were engaged on making this innovation a success,” said Kellgren. “When we can develop products that have a positive impact on our employee’s jobs, both out on the road and in the office, we know what we’re doing is a good thing, and that only happens when everyone comes together and cares greatly about what they’re contributing to a project.”

“Our team has an enormous amount of pride in the quality of what they’re putting out right now, and we feel like we’re just starting to hit our stride,” Kellgren added. “We couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds, and the CCJ Innovator award is a huge testament to this.”

Aim Navigator’s Road Rescue add-on delivers an overall quicker, easier and more efficient method for Aim customer drivers to request and receive roadside assistance. It’s simple: A driver launches Aim Navigator (available on iOS or Android) and chooses Road Rescue from the menu. The app is then used to capture the necessary information regarding the driver’s issue. Once the driver submits the request, Aim’s Road Rescue department will immediately receive the driver’s information, location and details of the roadside event, and the driver will be dropped into a text conversation with an Aim Road Rescue agent right from the Aim Navigator app.

The beauty of this rests in Aim’s experts being able to manage multiple roadside events simultaneously. Before, an Aim Road Rescue specialist could field only one phone call at a time. Now, by leveraging text-based communication, team members can manage and more quickly resolve multiple inbound issues at once. This has proven especially valuable during high-volume periods like during extreme weather events.

Using the Aim Navigator app, a driver can request Aim's Road Rescue service quickly and easily. After the app has captured the necessary information and the request has been submitted, the driver will soon enter a text conversation with an Aim Road Rescue specialist.

Another vital component of the Aim Navigator app came from John and Aim’s leadership recognizing the increasing cultural diversity among America’s trucking workforce, which includes many people whose primary language isn’t English. Naturally, many of those drivers who speak English as a second language drive for Aim’s customers, and John understood how valuable it would be if customer drivers could accurately and effectively communicate with Aim’s Road Rescue experts in their primary language, especially under the duress of a roadside emergency.

So, baked right into the app is two-way translation technology, allowing Aim to communicate with users in their native language. While what’s under the hood is complex, what the user experiences is seamless. Aim Navigator simply displays communications from Aim’s Road Rescue agents in whatever language setting the user has enabled on their mobile device (Spanish for example); meanwhile, the Aim employee’s inputs were all in English. The driver’s replies are similarly converted to English for the Road Rescue team.

Another key component of Aim Navigator is its texting feature, which caters to younger generations, who typically prefer texting over making a phone call. So instead of dialing into Aim for roadside service, drivers can text directly with Aim’s Road Rescue department through the Aim Navigator app. John and Aim’s leadership saw this as another great way to attract and support younger talent to come drive for Aim.

This isn’t the first time CCJ has recognized Aim’s CIO & VP of Technology, John Reed, and Aim as industry innovators. In 2010 and 2013, Aim was recognized as part of CCJ’s Innovators program, which is a monthly spotlight series that qualifies companies for the Innovator of the Year award. First was for John’s way-ahead-of-its-time Electronic Driver Vehicle Condition Report that streamlined pre- and post-trip inspections, which innumerable companies have adopted and still use to this day in one form or another. The other award was earned for a system Reed developed that tracked training effectiveness.

“We recognized long ago that technology was rapidly reshaping our industry, and rather than be at the mercy of it, we leveraged it as one of Aim’s key differentiators,” Aim President, Scott Fleming, said. “I firmly believe the value we deliver to our customers through embracing and developing new technological innovations is one of the main advantages of the Aim brand, and it’s evident in the size and scope of our company and this extraordinary accolade CCJ has honored us with.”

“It’s thanks to the ingenuity and devotion of John Reed and his team that we’ve reached this point, that we have such a competitive advantage,” Fleming added, “and I want to express my deep appreciation to John and his team for earning Aim CCJ’s Innovator of the Year award, and we—along with the industry we serve—are fortunate to have this level of talent moving the needle and making significant, lasting impacts.”