Orbcomm's biggest customer is Schneider National, a Green Bay, Wisconsin, trucking firm that owns 43, 000 trailers.

FORBES: Iridium for truck trailers

Yet Bill Zollars, boss of Yellow Roadway, America's largest trucking firm, says that poor rail services have forced him to put 20, 000 intermodal shipments each month back on to trucks.

ECONOMIST: Gridlock on the rails, roads and ports of America

Adam Julch, an enormous former college football star who is now a manager at a trucking firm in Omaha, Nebraska, complains that he had to trade in his pickup truck for a little Honda Civic.

ECONOMIST: The economy: the problem

Hakuta's boss, Yasunori Fujikura, and another trucking-firm executive had wanted to create a computer system that would bypass middlemen and link cargo companies with drivers.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Japan's Mobile-Phone Culture

Eve Partners, a mergers-and-acquisitions firm for the trucking industry, started to do e-mail campaigns.

FORBES: Magazine Article