Hey ... I am LOST!
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November 30 2009
How do I get there... an where am I?
I had a GPS Tracking customer tell me the other day how our real-time vehicle tracking system helped one of their dispatchers get a driver back on track. The guy was filling in for the regular driver and wasn’t familiar with the area on the route. At some point in the day, the supervisor saw that the driver was falling behind on his deliveries. After calling the driver and asking some probing questions, he admitted he had gotten lost and went all the way across the county by mistake. He finally asked, "How do I get there?" The supervisor quickly put the features of our system to use.
In addition to the standard map that shows the real time position of all the trucks in the fleet, the "breadcrumb trail" history of a particular unit, and thirteen different reports and alerts, our system has a Route It function. The supervisor clicked on the driver’s position to get his current address. He then clicked on the Route It function. This popped up a "From and To" box. The supervisor typed in the destination address and pasted the starting address of where the driver is. After pressing the Submit button, the system displayed a highlighted route with turn-by-turn instructions.
The supervisor, noting it was getting late in the day, decided to check on traffic. All he had to do was go back to the real-time tracking program to get instant, real-time traffic information. He clicked on the Traffic button and saw through a color-coded legend that there were no slowdowns on his route. But he noticed a complete shutdown on I-95. Armed with that information, he warned his drivers that were heading south to avoid the area.
The supervisor said he was especially happy to have the GPS vehicle tracking system that day. The bottom line is that it helped the company avoid paying the driver overtime that day and most importantly, allowed the supervisor to go home on time.
