Steve Vonachen is in the assistance business. As transportation manager for BOC in Pekin, Ill., he oversees a private fleet of tank trucks that supply industrial gases to some 23,000 customer sites nationwide. The fleet's 2,000 trucks make 1.5 million deliveries a year to a diverse customer base that ranges from a beverage manufacturer buying carbon dioxide for soda pop to hospitals relying on fresh supplies of oxygen for the sick.

"One thing BOC absolutely cannot do is fail to deliver oxygen, helium, or one of the other gases that are vital to customers' operations," Vonachen says. "Our business is based on our customers' needs and what our customers are doing."

Even with such a challenging mandate, Vonachen—like many logistics professionals—is constantly being asked to do more with less. That's led BOC to take a hard look at the way it manages its private fleet.

Until the mid-1990s, BOC ran a paperwork-heavy, inefficient fleet that encouraged the rise of local "empires" in dispatch operations. Then BOC discovered GOLD—the Global Optimal Logistics Distribution information system.

Using GOLD, BOC was able to centralize fleet management under a single, national operation, bringing what Vonachen calls a "new level of transparency" to fleet performance. In the process, he says, BOC has created a culture that embraces innovation, is performance-driven, and is accountable at all levels. That in turn has helped the company develop a "self-directed" workforce and a safe operation that's a perennial award-winner in the National Private Truck Council Hall of Fame.

At the heart of the private fleet's success is GOLD, a multifaceted fleet management system that BOC developed in-house and implemented in 1995. Back then, managers saw a need for technology that could not only centralize control of fleet operations but could also reduce the mountains of paperwork associated with hazardous materials transportation.

Before GOLD, schedules were managed at more than 100 field locations, a situation that led to turf wars between satellite offices. "If you had a plant outage in the Midwest, it used to be hard to get other locations to help out because everybody wanted to do their own thing," Vonachen recalls. That situation clearly was detrimental to service quality. "You can't have 100 little empires throughout the country when you're all going for the same goal," he says.

To get a "big picture" view and ensure consistent service, BOC decided to centralize control over its entire fleet. Today, GOLD's Centralized Transport Management module consolidates scheduling and driver dispatch at BOC's National Operations Center in Bethlehem, Pa. There, about 70 people manage scheduling and monitor product inventory levels, controlling costs, eliminating deadhead miles, and providing full visibility into deliveries.

In addition to centralized scheduling, GOLD has added other functions over the years, says Vonachen, a 23-year company veteran. The company installed on-board computers in its trucks and switched to paperless driver logs. Electronic billing and payment soon followed.

Today, drivers no longer phone a dispatcher and wait for hand-written order slips to be processed. Instead, they log onto a computer in the drivers' room to get their pickup orders directly from GOLD, which is constantly being updated in real time. Besides designing an efficient distribution system on a dynamic basis, the system automatically links drivers' miles to electronic logbooks, which are transmitted to payroll to ensure accurate and timely pay.

Because GOLD monitors individual vehicle performance, it has even improved accident analysis and prevention. "We know when that truck hits the brake," Vonachen says. "Before it was a guessing game. Now we now exactly what the truck was doing at the time of an accident."

GOLD also manages equipment utilization. If the system shows that a load is ready for delivery and a truck is available, the pair is matched automatically. "It's changed 100 percent from where we were," Vonachen says. "It's totally automated. You just click a mouse and everything is there."

While not universally praised by BOC's drivers—Vonachen admits that many are wary of a computer that monitors truck speed and can detect how many times a driver hits the brakes—on-board computers have gained acceptance as drivers have come to recognize their benefits. For example, the system can protect drivers when it shows that accidents were not their fault. Timely pay and the elimination of hours of work on paper logbooks also help to win drivers over, he says.

"They used to think it was Big Brother watching them all the time," says Vonachen, who believes that some of their concerns may have stemmed from a lack of familiarity with the technology. "There's a learning curve," he adds. Continued...

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