PeopleNet Helps Howard Transportation Weather Hurricane Katrina

Mobile Communications Provided Vital Communications Link with Drivers

MINNEAPOLIS - January 26, 2006 - When Howard Transportation acquired PeopleNet onboard computing and mobile communications systems three years ago to increase efficiency and minimize deadhead miles, little did the fleet know that the system would be its central nervous system during Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the United States in recent years.

Based in Ellisville, Miss., Howard Transportation is the wholly owned private fleet subsidiary for Howard Industries, Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of electrical generators. It relies on a fleet of 125 company owned power units, all of which are equipped with PeopleNet mobile communications, and another 30 owner-operators, and 100 flatbed trailers. Forty percent of its moves are outbound to utilities and contractors primarily east of the Mississippi. The fleet also operates a brokerage firm to help secure inbound freight to manufacturing facilities.

"Our drivers are out on the road for 7-14 days at a time," says Operations Manager Suzanne Skipper, describing the company's previous manual based dispatching and routing system. "The addition of PeopleNet allowed us to improve our time between empty and loaded, to improve our routing and to have a load ready when our driver drops another load."

Before Katrina hit on Monday August 29, 2005, Howard's management team took the necessary steps to safeguard its facilities including telling the drivers out on the road to use PeopleNet for communications because its cellular based communication and Internet accessibility. "If things got out of hand, we told them to call our Kenly, N.C. terminal," she said.

Despite these advance precautions, little could have prepared Howard for the devastation wreaked by the sixth strongest Atlantic hurricane on record. In fact, Jones County, where the headquarters are located, was the fourth hardest hit county in the country. "There was no way to prepare for the devastation we were to face," says Skipper.

Skipper was one of the few to make it into the office on Tuesday, the day following the storm. Because there was no power and no phones, "we didn't know anything about our drivers and as it turns out we wouldn't know anything about them until Wednesday night."

But the company was still able to operate because drivers were calling the Kenly terminal and the terminal was calling customers and booking loads by patching into the PeopleNet system remotely. "It wasn't efficient as normal but they were getting the job done," she says. "Without PeopleNet, we would have lost all information on our drivers which was on our mainframe that was wiped out in the storm. Yet we continued to run."

On Wednesday, when they realized the full devastation of the storm meant they were going to be without power and phones for a while, Skipper and her team took action. They started driving north until they could find power and phones. Some 160 miles later, they landed at a hotel in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where they set up remote operations.

"By Thursday, we were back in business," she said. "And by Saturday, five days after the storm had hit, the mainframe came back on line and we were able to return back to Ellisville. I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't had PeopleNet to keep communications with our drivers and customers."

Headquartered in Minneapolis, PeopleNet is the fastest-growing provider of Internet-based onboard computing and mobile communications systems to the transportation industry, including truckload, LTL, private, and service fleets. The company serves several Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and Canada and has signed more than 1,200 customers since our inception 10 years ago.

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For more information, contact: Brian McLaughlin, (888) 346-3486 ext. 211
bmclaughlin@peoplenetonline.com