For distributors, life revolves around getting goods to customers in a timely, efficient manner. That's why reputation is everything for companies like Reliable Food Supplies Inc. of Scarborough, Ont., which provides frozen and refrigerated products to the Toronto-area foodservice industry.

To maintain schedules, keep track of its deliveries, and improve customer service, the distributor had installed on-board computers in its small private fleet. But the results were less than satisfactory, and the company decided to try a different technology.

By replacing its antiquated on-board computers with a Web-based fleet management system, Reliable Foods has been able to reap time and money savings on several fronts. The new system tracks drivers' activities in real time, from their morning arrival to the end of their workday. Simply having that data, moreover, has improved customer service and helped improve drivers' productivity.

Until last year, Reliable Foods monitored and tracked deliveries through on-board computers installed in the cabs of its 14 trucks. Drivers reported delivery starts and completions, the total number of pieces delivered, and even lunch breaks.

Although that system seemed promising at first, it soon lost its appeal for Reliable Foods, a 52-year-old company that distributes 1.5 million cases of food annually to restaurants, hotels, and roadhouses located within 10 hours of its warehouse.

For one thing, the computers were expensive to maintain. "Because the units were mounted in the trucks, the drivers would accidentally bump and damage them," says IT Manager Tony Priaulx. Repairs typically cost $200 to $300 per unit, he says.

More importantly, the delivery data was always a day behind schedule. "At the end of the day, the drivers came back here, grabbed a cartridge from the dispatch office, and uploaded their individual information into it," says Priaulx. "The information was then uploaded to a PC that night or the next morning and used to generate a report for the day. At best we'd get it at five or six o'clock that night, and no one would really look at it until the next day anyway."

As a result, problems weren't discovered until after they had occurred. For example, when one of Reliable's drivers was held up at a customer's location for two hours, dispatchers didn't learn about it until the next day.

Deciphering the delivery information wasn't easy, either. Drivers sometimes keyed in incorrect codes and other information, rendering the data useless. "We were at the mercy of the driver, and got to the point where we weren't paying much attention to the data provided anyway," says Priaulx. "We really weren't getting much value out of it, so we drifted away from the system and let it lag."

Ready for something new, Priaulx was willing to listen when Reliable Foods was approached by Toronto-based Cube Route, which offers its Tracking and Planning package through a Web-based application service provider (ASP) model. The service combines tracking, planning, and routing functionality and provides users with real-time visibility of their delivery operations.

Reliable Foods agreed to give the system a try. To get the distributor's operations ready to use the Web-based tracking system, Cube Route looked at the company's customer list and "scrubbed" it to make sure the data was updated and accurate, says Cube Route COO Jeff Murphy. The vendor coded and uploaded information on approximately 2,000 customers to the fleet management system, which checked addresses and kicked out any that needed further investigation and re-coding. That process created a data baseline for the system, which was then ready to accept delivery information.

The shipper provided actual order data to Cube Route's programmers, who used it to create delivery plans based on estimated drive times, estimated time of arrival (ETA), and related information. "We captured what was going on in the field and used that intelligence to hone in on the time at the door," says Murphy. "They had an engineered plan for the entire day before the program was even launched."

Implementation began in July 2004, starting with two drivers who used existing cell phones to sign into the system, enter information, and receive instructions. Today, drivers access the system via Java-enabled Motorola i58 cellular telephones that use the TELUS system (comparable to Nextel in the United States). The phones are enabled with GPS (Global Positioning System), providing Reliable with a tool for auditing delivery reports. GPS runs in the background as drivers call into a password-protected website, where they enter information about their activities and receive messages with instructions concerning exceptions, returns, and other changes. Continued...

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