Solving the industry's mileage wars
Before PC*Miler, determining mileage was complicated. Shippers and carriers relied on paper maps, rulers and handwritten calculations to estimate distances. Different parties often arrived at different mileage figures, creating disputes over freight billing, driver pay and route planning.
The industry needed a common source of truth.
That solution emerged from Princeton University, where Operations Research professor Dr. Alain Kornhauser founded ALK Technologies with a vision of digitally modeling the North American transportation network. Instead of relying on static maps, his team created a mathematical representation of roads, intersections and highway connections that could calculate consistent mileage between locations.
When PC*Miler launched in the mid-1980s, it gave shippers and carriers something they had never had before: a shared, reliable mileage standard.
From routing software to industry standard
As adoption grew, PC*Miler became deeply embedded in transportation operations.
The platform became a trusted source for freight billing, driver pay calculations and International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) reporting. It also pioneered truck-specific routing capabilities by introducing detailed road attributes that accounted for vehicle restrictions, clearances and legal truck routes.
Over time, the platform expanded beyond simple mileage calculations to support increasingly complex transportation requirements, including hazardous materials compliance, street-level routing and commercial location intelligence.
Its partnership ecosystem also grew alongside the industry, including long-standing relationships with organizations such as the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA), government transportation agencies and many of the leading transportation management systems used throughout North America.
Intelligence beyond the road
Version 1.0 focused on mapping roads.
Version 40 helps organizations understand the entire transportation landscape.
Today, PC*Miler includes more than 4 million miles of truck-navigable roads, over 62 million points of interest and millions of commercial locations designed specifically for transportation operations. Rather than simply guiding drivers to an address, the platform helps direct them to the appropriate commercial entrance, gate or facility access point.
That intelligence is continuously refined through ongoing data stewardship. The latest release includes updates across more than 1.5 million miles of truck attributes, the addition of more than 3.7 million speed limits throughout the U.S. and Canada, over 60,000 new points of interest and tens of thousands of customer-reported improvements. The result is more reliable routing, more predictable transit times and greater confidence that every route reflects the latest commercial road conditions.
The platform also incorporates sophisticated transportation intelligence, including truck-specific restrictions, hazardous materials routing, toll calculations, traffic-aware routing and weather-informed planning. Through PCM Web, Integration APIs and local installations, these capabilities support decision-making across routing, dispatch, planning and customer service workflows.
Beyond its standalone capabilities, PC*Miler serves as the routing and mileage foundation for many of Trimble's transportation solutions. Its commercial routing engine powers planning and dispatch workflows within transportation management systems such as Trimble TruckMate and TMW.Suite TMS, provides the routing intelligence behind Trimble CoPilot's turn-by-turn truck navigation and supports optimization within Trimble Appian-powered fleet planning solutions. This shared routing foundation helps ensure that the route planned in the back office is the same route drivers follow on the road, improving consistency across planning, execution and billing processes.
As transportation operations have become increasingly interconnected, PC*Miler has evolved from a routing application into a core intelligence layer that helps connect planning, optimization, execution and navigation across the broader transportation technology ecosystem.
The next chapter: PC*Miler Version 40
Transportation has changed dramatically over the last four decades, but one thing remains constant: the need for accurate, reliable routing intelligence.
As the industry embraces automation, connected ecosystems and AI-powered decision-making, PC*Miler continues to evolve alongside it. Version 40 expands on that mission with enhanced street-level intelligence, integrated weather and traffic-aware routing and more sophisticated route optimization capabilities that help transportation organizations balance service, cost, compliance and sustainability.
Whether planning thousands of routes through QuickBatch, identifying weather-related disruptions before departure, or ensuring drivers follow safe, truck-legal routes to the final destination, PC*Miler helps carriers, shippers and logistics providers make smarter, more informed transportation decisions.
Forty years after helping end the industry's mileage wars, PC*Miler continues to serve as one of the foundational technologies powering freight movement across North America.
