Xata Corporation is changing its name to XRS Corporation and will soon offer what it calls a “revolutionary” all-mobile platform of the same name to manage trucking compliance and performance. The new name, effective immediately, stands for ‘Xata Road Science’.

XRS says the new platform – ready in spring 2013 -- will help fleets and drivers keep up with the alphabet soup of modern compliance, meaning HOS, CSA, EOBR, IFTA, etc.

“Whatever’s next, with whatever rules that emerge, XRS will help drivers comply,” the company says.

The platform will run on Android and Windows Mobile smartphones, tablets, and other hand-held devices, with more operating-system certifications on the way. All told, it runs on more than 50 types of mobile devices to transmit vehicle and operator data directly to a management dashboard, automatically. XRS has been developed to run on 3G, 4G LTE, ultra-broadband, and whatever the next generation of mobile technology brings. The company has partnership agreements with the leading brands in mobile communications in both the U.S. and Canada (Rogers in Canada).

Nearly 90% of drivers already have mobile devices in use, the company says, meaning in most cases there would be no additional hardware costs associated with XRS.

XRS works this way: the small, easily installed in-cab XRS Relay device taps into the truck’s computer (with no holes in your dashboard), which is said to take 10 minutes; data is transferred from that device via Bluetooth to the driver’s smartphone, tablet computer or rugged device; the data is transferred via cellular network to the web-based system for data collection and analysis; and the result is an easy-to-use dashboard of compliance and fleet optimization data and scorecards.

Fleet optimization comes via “seamless, automated” reporting of fleet performance indicators: fuel consumption, hard braking, shift patterns, idle engine wear, power takeoff usage, trip reporting, and more.

XRS is claimed to be truly ‘plug and play’, without the complexity of fixed onboard system, and to make life easier for drivers. An example: speech prompts tell the driver when hours-of-service limits are being approached. Tracking is intuitive and seamless for both driver and fleet manager, the company says.

The flexibility of XRS to work alongside thousands of other applications available for smartphones and tablets makes it as big or as small as users need it to be, the company adds, whether for owner-operators or small, medium or large trucking operations.

XRS notes that it’s already well down the road of “the mobile revolution” with its Turnpike mobile fleet-management solution. The trucking market is mobile-ready, it says.

The new platform will be in the range of current Turnpike pricing today, with varying pricing levels dependent on package and feature functionality. There will be no long-term contracts.

XRS will replace XataNet and Turnpike, which will be phased out over several years.