ALK Technologies Inc., a logistics solution and navigation software, announced that Schilli Transportation has integrated ALK Maps into their Driver Daily Events (DDE) driver management tool. The DDE system offers Schilli’s driver managers complete visibility into the scheduling, planning and operational activity of the fleet, including but not limited to work assignments, routes and inspection schedules.
With the integration of ALK Maps, Schilli’s driver managers are now able to visualize a selected driver’s current location and all assigned routes on an interactive map. Each route is color coded so a driver manager can analyze the route and assess opportunity to reduce dead miles. With ALK Maps, a user can visualize nearby fuel stops along the driver’s route and view fuel pricing from Schilli’s partnership with the fuel providers. This enables the driver manager to pick the most cost-effective fuel stop location for a driver based on their current route and communicate the information to the driver. The enhanced mapping capabilities provided by ALK Maps have resulted in significant time savings for the driver managers.
“What used to be a manual cumbersome process of referring to a plotted map and using a free online mapping program for research has been completely automated with this new solution based around ALK Maps. This saves us an average of 15 minutes for each look-up that is performed. On an average during the course of the day, each user is able to save almost two hours of time,” said Peter Adams, driver manager at Schilli Transportation.
With the integration of ALK Maps, driver managers are also able to visualize adherence to the delivery schedule based on color coding of the trucks on the map; red indicating delays, yellow for warning and green indicating on-time. Managers can access Hours of Service, current location, direction, speed and ETA for each driver along the route. ALK Maps also integrates with in-cab navigation systems.
“We are really excited with how the integration of ALK Maps has helped us improve operational efficiency and save costs with optimizing planning, in such a short amount of time,” said Lou Wilkinson, vice president of IT solutions at Schilli Transportation. “The new capabilities that we have been able to offer with ALK Maps have gotten rave reviews from every single user of the application.”