CCJ

October 2016

Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal

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TECHNOLOGY: ROUTING OPTIMIZATION but it recently has acquired a number of small businesses in the construction, electrical, plumbing and painting trades. It now offers a full menu of home ser- vices to residents in wealthy suburbs west of Boston. The company is building on the tech- nology infrastructure that eventually will lead to a mobile app that customers can use to request a service 24/7. Hopkins wants to provide the customer with a live ETA and a picture of the worker assigned to the job. Poolsure also is transforming its business with technology. Customers for the Houston-based company do not need to pick up the telephone to order a delivery; in fact, they don't need to do anything at all. Poolsure delivers chlorine and other water treatment chemicals and services to hotels, waterparks and wastewater treatment plants. The company installs water-testing devices in its customers' pools, and the devices are connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi, Ethernet or cellular networks. The devices send alerts when problems are detected with water levels, pumps, flow rates and water chemistry. The alerts are communicated wirelessly to Telogis' RouteCloud platform, which automat- ically locates and schedules the optimal truck to make a delivery. Out of 6,500 delivery sites, about 400 have the monitoring devices, and Poolsure delivers to another 4,000 sites on a fixed delivery schedule. Alan Falik, the company's president, wants to increase the number of sites with monitoring devices to reduce costs by scheduling deliveries based on actual need. Poolsure also is working with a team of data scientists to create algorithms that use the data gathered from its sensors, and additional data such as demand spikes and weather patterns, to schedule deliveries in advance. "By next summer, we hope to have a robust algorithm to predict our frequency needs," Falik says. "We can predict (deliv- eries) weeks in advance." Bringing in telematics Twin Pines uses the Wex Fleet Ser- vices gas card and recently added Wex Telematics to its vehicles. The company uses information from the telematics system to improve the physical security of its assets and to verify time and loca- tions of vehicles and workers to resolve billing disputes. Twin Pines now has an "almost 100 percent success rate" for resolving billing disputes, Hopkins says. Before using Wex Telematics, the company was writing off $10,000 to $20,000 a year in receivables. For repeat customers of snowplowing and lawn mowing services, Twin Pines uses the system to design more efficient routes to get workers to jobsites faster, making it possible to add another lawn or two to each route to increase revenue. Twin Pines also uses Wex Telematics to confirm that workers reached every loca- tion on their assigned routes and to track how long they spent at each house. This data helps to determine if workers are get- ting more efficient and when to squeeze in more customers onto routes. Twin Pines also can provide customers with an accurate ETA, such as when they call during a snowstorm. "If I get calls for help, I can determine the approximate time a driver will be there to within half an hour," Hopkins says. "Our customers love knowing that." Bernie Kavanagh, vice president of North America Fleet for Wex, says fleets are using the system in other ways to improve routing efficiency and be more responsive to customer needs. "Managers have the ability to reroute drivers if a low-cost fuel provider is near- by, if hazardous weather conditions arise, or if an appointment changes at the last minute," Kavanagh says. Larger shipments Whether shipments are bound for a distribution center or a driveway, the need for visibility is constant. Poolsure, a Houston-based provider of chlorine and other water treatment chemicals, uses Telogis' RouteCloud to plan and schedule deliveries. Twin Pines, a provider of lawn care, maintenance and repair services, is developing an Uber-like mobile app that customers will be able to use to request a service 24/7. 64 commercial carrier journal | october 2016

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