Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/858523
100 commercial carrier journal | august 2017 TECHNOLOGY: STRATEGIC ROUTING door deliveries using handcarts that carry up to 20 cartons. All of the runners have separate routes. To make this type of plan work, Fresh Direct needs enough orders to fill three to six urban routes, says Rod Mathey, senior operations analyst. Route planners use Omni- tracs Roadnet to input the number of runners available on the following day and at what time. "We can set up any number of different schedules for individual routes," Mathey says. "On the day before delivery, it ends up being a people management issue to know who we will have available." Once the schedules and routes are set, Fresh Direct sends runners a text message with instructions on where and when to be ready for work. The employees use public transportation to get to their assigned locations due to limited parking. "I can't imagine how they would drive to a job," Mathey says. Once they arrive, the runners use Airclic's mobile app to view their individual delivery manifests, record their arrivals at each stop and con- firm piece counts. Mathey expects the number of handcart routes will increase as the company grows, which will help its routes be more profitable while meet- ing next-day service requirements. "We will create more and more of these as we get to the right density level in various neighborhoods," he says. Final-mile routing A route's last few miles can be the most difficult and risky for drivers. e streets get smaller and the turns become tighter before drivers reach pickup or delivery sites. Once they arrive, they may not know where to enter, where to go and who to meet. All of this can leave drivers confused and distracted, raising their stress level and risks for accidents. One strategy is to fine-tune the preferences in a routing soware system. TruGreen, a lawn care service provider, uses Telogis' suite of route planning appli- cations for its fleet of 7,000 vehicles. TruGreen has optimized its routes to put its driver technicians at customer lo- cations with the right side of their trucks — where the hose is located — facing the lawns for service, says Ken Dewitt, the company's chief information officer. Some of the latest developments in routing soware make driving a truck comparable to flying an airplane. Just as air traffic controllers give pilots specific procedures when arriving at and de- parting from airports, fleets can provide drivers with the same type of detailed guidance for the final mile of their routes. Telogis Sites, a module that integrates with the Telogis Navigation app, lets users create site-specific instructions for drivers. Users view aerial satellite images of locations and set geofences to trigger a workflow in the cab for drivers. When drivers cross the geofences, a workflow for the specific location could read a custom note to drivers with instructions for the destination site. A geofence could be established a mile away from a site. When crossed, the app would read instructions on how to locate the entrance. Another geofence could be set up at the entrance to trigger instructions on where and how to proceed next, such as "Head to loading dock 12, and ask for Mark." By using this feature in Telogis Sites, transportation companies can remove distractions for their drivers, says Erin Cave, Telogis' vice president of prod- uct management. Tri-State Motor Transit is a division of Roadmaster that provides specialized, secure transport using 300 power units dispatched from offices in Joplin, Mo., and Glendale, Ariz. In May, the compa- ny implemented the Telogis Navigation app to send drivers detailed final-mile instructions to assist with pickups and deliveries. "Our main concern is that they are on a safe legal route for the product being transported," says Frank Larance, TSMT's director of asset utilization and business intelligence. Telogis allows TruGreen to steer its driver technicians to customer locations with the right side of their trucks — where the hose is located — facing the lawns for service. Tri-State Motor Transit has implemented the Telogis Navigation app to send driv- ers detailed final-mile instructions to assist with pickups and deliveries.