Synergistic Systems--Routing, Dispatch, Cross Dock, Yard Management, RFID, Mobile Data, 3PL

On-board Computers Yield Efficiency

It's a familiar tale

A pickup and delivery driver has just finished his last delivery of the day and is on his way to a round of pickups. Finally, several miles toward his destination, the radio's crackling gave way to the decipherable voice of the dispatcher. "Got a pickup for you," the voice told him. The address was a block away from his last delivery. The driver would waste nearly an hour round-trip picking up a parcel that should have taken 10 minutes.

Such inefficiency was a familiar and, ultimately, unacceptable scenario for AAA Cooper before it implemented a wireless dispatch communications system using mobile computers from the Norand Mobile Systems Division of Intermec Technologies Corporation.

AAA Cooper is a 44-year-old company based in Dothan, Alabama. It provides less-than-truckload, or LTL, pickup and delivery for area businesses. The transportation company serves most of the southeastern United States, with additional terminals in Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Louisville and Puerto Rico.

Time for a change

To improve its dispatch communications, AAA Cooper implemented a pilot project with Norand® PEN*KEY® 6100 mobile computers. The pilot ran in one of its larger sized trucking terminals in Dallas, Texas, where 50 drivers make from 700 to 800 pickups and 400 to 500 deliveries a day. Testing and fine-tuning the new system was accomplished with the help of Synergistic Systems, Inc., an Intermec business partner, which provided its Synergy Dispatch System PC-based software.

Part of the problem with dispatching the old way was that, as business at the larger terminals grew, the two-way radio technology was unable to keep up with communication demands. With the new wireless data communication system installed by Synergistics, the routes for drivers, and pickup and delivery information resides in the mobile computers, or is transferred there by dispatch.

"When you have fifteen or twenty drivers in a location, it's not such a big deal, but when you have forty or fifty drivers, it's hard to handle," said Rex Quattlebaum, manager of AAA Cooper's field computer systems. "Late in the afternoon, what typically happens is there will be five or six guys trying to talk to the dispatcher on the radio at one time. The communication is very inefficient that way."

Further decreasing efficiency was the inability of a dispatcher to convey new routing information while the driver was busy loading or unloading freight in the back of his truck. By the time the driver was back in the cab, a dispatcher might have begun relaying information to other drivers and would not be back in contact with the first driver for some time.

"A lot of the time if a dispatcher can't get through to a driver, and a pickup has to be made at five o'clock and it's four-thirty, the only option is to run another driver over there," Quattlebaum said. "So you run a driver out of his route to go make the pickup, and you spend gas, time and money, when the first driver may have been only a block away."

The Solution

The solution for AAA Cooper was to implement the Norand system to maintain real-time communication between dispatchers and drivers. It begins with a Banyan server run on either an IBM or Compaq computer. The dispatching and mobile computer software was provided by Synergistics. The server has several workstations attached to it for dispatchers. The system is connected to a mainframe, where information can flow back and forth between dispatcher and driver. BellSouth provides wireless communication.

Each driver keeps a case in his truck, called a transportable. It contains a Norand dock, modem and fuse box. The case can easily be moved from one truck to another, enabling AAA Cooper to keep equipment costs for outfitting each truck to a minimum.

“The trucks all have a bay station and electrical connection with an antenna. When a driver switches from one truck to another, he just goes over to the second truck, puts his transportable down, latches it into place, hooks his antenna up, plugs in the electrical connection and he’s ready to go. It takes less than a minute,” Quattlebaum said.

When a driver begins his shift he queries the computer for a delivery manifest, it appears on the computer screen and the driver is on his way. Typically, each driver is allotted eight to ten deliveries, and relevant details about them are included in the manifest.

The driver then uses the touch-sensitive computer screen to highlight the first delivery location and presses the on-screen button labeled "en route." When he gets to the delivery site he presses the on-screen button labeled "arrive," which prompts the computer to display the freight bill number, the number of pieces and the weight of the delivery. After making the delivery, the driver enters the first initial and last name of the person who accepted the freight. Time and date information is automatically added by the mobile computers.

Following the drop-off, the driver clears the delivery on the computer screen. Once he does this, all the information on that delivery is sent over the BellSouth wireless data network to the mainframe at the terminal office. Should a customer call to ask whether freight reached its destination, the inquiry will be routed to AAA Cooper's tracing department where a few keystrokes brings up the time and date of arrival, as well as who received it.

The driver then repeats the process for the rest of his deliveries. As each delivery is made and cleared from the manifest, the dispatcher back at the trucking terminal sees the deliveries disappear from the computer screen one by one. This gives the dispatcher a real-time update on what work each driver has completed.

A driver’s point of view

"It helps me personally because you don't have to continuously use the phone," said pickup and delivery driver Mike Baker. "You can transmit pertinent information on pickup or deliveries and appointment times, automatically. This system keeps you from backtracking, especially on pickups. It typically saves me an hour to an hour and 15 minutes each day."

Once the deliveries are done, it's time to begin pickups. "When customers in the afternoon begin calling with pickups, the dispatcher will assign them to the proper driver and pickup information will transmit to the driver's mobile computer in his truck," Quattlebaum said.

The beauty of the Norand 6100 is that even if routing changes are made while a driver is out of his truck, he will get an instant update as soon as he gets back in the cab.

Pickup communications are handled much like deliveries. The driver highlights where hi is going next, and once there he presses the on-screen “arrive” button so the dispatcher can see what he is doing. When he makes the pick up he will put in the freight bill number, the number of pieces, weight and the destination zip code. That information is transmitted wirelessly back to the server.

With an efficient mobile communications network in place, AAA Cooper has since ordered some 430 of the Norand 6100 computers for use in seven of its trucking terminals. Its Atlanta, Georgia location, by far the largest, is running 130 mobile computers, while Dallas, Chicago, Birmingham, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville round out the rest.

Quattlebaum estimates that the new system has saved his company an hour daily per driver. In Atlanta alone, this saves about 130 hours a day.

"It means that if a driver was going to work a ten hour day, then he will be able to make an additional stop or two," Quattlebaum said.

But, he added, it is in dispatching where the change is felt most. "Being able to see everything on the screen-–what work needs to be accomplished in that area--you can make better assignments. You can give a guy two pickups that are a block apart, instead of giving one to one guy and one to the other. You're going to save some driving time that way," Quattlebaum said.