|
The handhelds also provide proof of delivery.
Other systems monitor the vehicle’s idle time, provide rerouting to increase on-time deliveries, and reduce emissions.
At Qualcomm’s San Diego office, Bert Gillespie’s focus is on the service-based trucking market — the plumbers, landscapers, pest control, electricians and other service businesses that maintain, on average, from 20 to 50 vehicles. Gillespie estimates there are 5,000 to 10,000 fleets that are ripe to deploy wireless inventory tracking, fuel management and driver monitoring applications nationwide.
Why the effort to penetrate the light/medium truck market now? Executives said that the technology has evolved to the point where it’s user-friendly and easily combined for the applications noted.
Frank Scurlock, transportation manager for Pacific Coast Steel in San Diego, said a Qualcomm package “has provided us greater control over our drivers and improved control of fuel costs. There no longer is any ‘BS’ regarding what hours the driver turns in on his timesheet because the driver knows we can pull a GPS report to compare apples to apples.”
The company maintains a fleet of 80 Class 6 and Class 8 trucks. Of those, Scurlock said 43 have been equipped with Qualcomm’s Service Fleet Manager system. This wireless application helps separate the good drivers from those needing remedial training, Scurlock said.
Sprint Nextel provided foodservice distributor Sysco of Alabama with a wireless system to manage the company’s sales force. Determining the location of a potential client in relation to a sales person was time consuming and “virtually impossible, as there was no way to track sales representatives in the field — all of which was costing the company new client engagements,” said Stacey Geipe, Sprint Nextel marketing manager.
Sysco deployed Sprint Nextel’s Comet Tracker and the Motorola i335 GPS-enabled phone, Geipe said. The system turns employees’ phones into remote data collection and verification tools that communicate information directly to a desktop PC back at the office. Sales representatives are then able to view their routes with their district manager, allowing managers to determine when a prospective client had been passed by accidentally or intentionally, Geipe said.
Sprint Nextel also is the wireless carrier for Ford Motor Co.’s Work Truck Solutions, a factory-installed suite of wireless applications for new F- and E-series vehicles.
|