Mike Agerbo: Well, a lot of us are familiar with GPS technology especially when it comes to navigation, helping us get to where we want to go. Well, I’m going to show you how GPS technology can help your mobile work force.
Jack, tell me about float transportation?
Jack Mayes: Float transport runs refrigerated trailers, heater trailers, drive-end trailers and flat beds or in the truck load and LTO business. As I said we’re original, we run strictly within Southern Ontario and Upstate New York.
Mike Agerbo: So, you have over a 140 trucks. In the old days, how did you keep tracking all that?
Jack Mayers: With a prayer, we loss tractors and we had a hard time locating them. It was a very good—it’s as good as you dispense system once. If your system was current and up-to-date, then you didn’t have an issue. You can have them float throughout the day, your way behind, it’s going to update your system, you lose your trailers, you lose your tractors.
Mike Agerbo: How long have you been with TELUS?
Jack Mayers: We’ve been with TELUS for over 10 years and we’d started doing our dispatch system with the Mike system and it was just a general evolution that we went on the TELUS with the satellite tracking systems.
Mike Agerbo: Tell me about the TELUS tracker.
Jack Mayers: It’s simply put, it’s like black box. TELUS installed in Oregon. We book an appointment, TELUS shows up, installed a box in about three hours and it’s good to go. Very simple, very fast, and it’s tamperproof.
Mike Agerbo: It really is amazing how you can see the satellite view. Can you get a birds-eye view?
Jack Mayers: Yeah, you can get birds-eye view, you can get an aerial view, you can zoom right down to where the tractor is. It’s a pretty amazing system.
Mike Agerbo: Why did you use TELUS overall?
Jack Mayers: Oh, it was an obvious solution. I think that because we were with TELUS, to begin with, we’ve had great service with them. If there’s any breakdowns, any mechanical issues, TELUS was always there. We explored many different avenues, different suppliers for the satellite tracking system and we found that the TELUS was one, the best recently priced. Number two; their name set it all and we just had a tremendous relationship with them. They seem quite eager to come in and help us with all of our issues and they have.
Mike Agerbo: What’s the customer feedback been?
Jack Mayers: Customer feedback’s been very positive. One of the issues you have in tracking is driver detention or waiting time and sometimes your customers tend not to believe that your driver’s been there for as long period as they actually have been. With the tracking system, we’re able to accurately show our customers the time that the driver showed up, the time that the driver left. The customers really enjoyed these reports we were getting because they’re accurate.
Mike Agerbo: Has there been cost savings since you employed the system?
Jack Mayers: Once we implemented this program, our drivers realized that we could track them at anyone time through out the day. They came in line. Our fill savings has come right down. We can track idle time, speed time, stop time. We can generate all these reports and it has significantly educated our drivers as to how to drive a tractor.
Mike Agerbo: Has the TELUS just made you more efficient?
Jack Mayers: Yes, it has. It’s helped us significantly in our dispatch being that’s it’s real time information, it has allowed our dispatchers to deploy your assets on, on time delivery, it allows us to track our assets and our on time delivery percentages have improve dramatically because of that. Currently as our drivers, Mike can do our dispatch, there’s a build up of calls and sometimes the dispatch just doesn’t know who has called in the past. Linking it to our dispatch system, if we can get the system to be blinking or notifying on the screen our dispatch will then be able to readily get back to our drivers.
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