COMPANY:
Pine Hall Brick
Winston-Salem, NC
OPERATION:
Delivery of materials to suppliers, construction sites, and individual customers
Problem:
In operation since 1922, Pine Hall Brick is a family-owned business and the largest supplier of clay pavers in the U.S. With several different manufacturing locations, delivering materials to suppliers and construction sites kept getting more challenging as the company expanded.
“We wanted to find a way to know where our trucks were at any one time so we could generate a lot more flexibility and efficiency in our delivery schedule,” says John Richardson, Pine Hall's transportation manager.
“We wanted a technology that would not only give us more detailed information for better planning, we also wanted our drivers to get the ability to tap into it for their own location needs,” he says. “Every day, they are going somewhere new to deliver a load, so we wanted them to have another resource to help generate directions.”
Several issues complicated the picture for Richardson. For starters, while the company operates its own fleet of 25 flatbed delivery trucks equipped with forklifts, the company also uses 15 trucks under contract — and drivers aren't always assigned to the same vehicle every day.
Solution:
Pine Hall Brick decided to adopt TeleNav Track, a GPS mobile resource management service from TeleNav Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA. The web-based tracking service gave Richardson and his team real-time visibility into the trucking fleet through online monitoring so it could identify current vehicle positions, estimate arrival times and assign delivery jobs to the nearest driver — all while allowing the company to observe the entire delivery fleet from its Madison, NC, dispatch offices.
“We must've cut down on the time we spent making calls to our drivers to ascertain their location by 100%,” he says. “We went from about 10 calls down to one, plus we're getting better equipment utilization. That saves us time, money and especially fuel.”
One of the biggest benefits to using TeleNav is how it helps Richardson and his team respond to emergencies. “For example, if one of our forklifts breaks down, we can immediately zero in on the closest driver with an operating forklift and get him over there to finish the unloading job,” he says.
Most of Pine Hall's delivery drivers now use the system's turn-by-turn GPS navigation capability to save time when driving to construction sites. Drivers also cut down on wasted gas and mileage accrued, as they do not get lost while en route to a location.
Overall, he says TeleNav Track has made Pine Hall's day-to-day operations a more “seamless process” because the company now has much more accurate information on truck locations. “This has led to more effective use of resources and has improved our customer service,” Richardson stresses.
“We are also pleased with the acceptance and use of the GPS technology by our drivers. They voluntarily adopted the service and are now using driving time more effectively. The knowledge of driving speeds, length and location of stops and past driving routes has proved invaluable.”
