Street Smarts

Efficient routing of truck fleets comes from experience, data collection and the  right software.

Idle hands do the devil’s work, the old saying goes, and idle trucks are considered equally sinful by those who own companies with collection fleets as well as trucks with mobile shredding capabilities.

As pieces of capital equipment, collection and mobile shredding trucks are only earning a return on their investment when they are actively picking up or destroying material. Just as some professionals need to maximize their "billable hours," so do these trucks need to maximize their useful time on the job.

But for fleet or route managers, simply making sure the trucks move off premises in the morning is not good enough. Trucks and their crews should receive the guidance and management to move from point A to point B efficiently, as well as to know what to expect once they reach either point.

Certainly the human touch in figuring all of this out will always be necessary, but managers can also get some help from the right software program.

Both information destruction company managers and drivers they hire will probably have a basic grasp of the geography of the cities and counties in which they operate.

But knowing the quickest route from one’s corporate home to any one given customer just scratches the surface of route management, say providers of route management software.

Similarly, just assigning a number of stops to one driver heading off in a certain direction can result in significant routing underachievement. "Due to time constraints, many route managers leave the order in which the jobs are performed in a given day to be decided by a particular truck driver," notes Mike Boehringer, president of routing software vendor EZshred, Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

Boehringer notes that even the term "route manager" can be a misnomer, as the owners of many entrepreneurial firms will remain as route managers long after their businesses have outgrown their ability to keep up with the task.

This starts out as the cost-effective way to get things done in a small, growing company, but eventually leads to growing pains. "Often, as shredding companies grow, just completing all the routes in a given day is considered a very successful outcome," says Boehringer. "Many shredding owners are quicker to buy or lease another truck, rather than simply invest a fraction of the money in enhancing their information systems," he notes.

Naturally, software vendors are the first to tout the benefits of their products, but their selling points merit consideration. "Information systems can tighten up their schedules and routes so they can perform more work with each and every one of their current vehicles," Boehringer points out.

Lorraine Keating, president and CEO of Prism Visual Software, Port Washington, N.Y., has helped companies in other industries with truck fleets making multiple stops to map out the most sensible routes. She is a firm believer in the need to track trucks, drivers and even individual collection bins.

In the Prism system, every single bin has a bar code assigned. This serves not only to track routing and stops completed, but also acts as a loss prevention measure, she notes. "It’s very easy for containers to disappear," says Keating.

Routing software can provide useful suggestions, but just how useful is largely a function of the data collected and fed into the program. It is a variation on the classic "garbage in/garbage out" weakness of all computer programs.

Experience is often referred to as the best teacher, and it is also a source of reliable information. Boehringer says he learned this first-hand in his career before starting EZshred, when he was the owner of Cleveland-based Shredding Solutions, which was ultimately acquired by Iron Mountain Inc., Boston.

"EZshred uses average historical times for routine or reoccurring clients," says Boehringer. Special events like clean-outs "are typically estimated based on the volume to be destroyed and the ease (or lack thereof) in which the materials can be removed from the client’s building or storage area."

Prism uses its bar code tracking to collect data on customer stops, including how many bins are located at a given stop, the duration of each stop at a given location and the amount of productive time versus down time at a given customer location. According to Keating, a stop can be time-stamped not only for arrival and departure, but a record is made of each scanned and serviced bin within a stop. "A report can then be run, say, with an average time per stop and the average number of bins at each stop," she notes.

This data can help offer a realistic assessment of how many stops can be made on a given route and help determine the most efficient routes.

Minimizing road time and maximizing collection and/or on-site shredding time are always the keys, the vendors note. "Unfortunately, driving the truck is the easiest task for the driver and the most unproductive task for the company owner," says Boehringer.

Thus, drivers may consciously or even subconsciously lean toward routes that keep them behind the wheel. Other ulterior motives might also need to be pinched out of the routing process. "The timing of lunch with driving past the driver’s favorite fast food restaurant should not weigh heavily in the route sequence," quips Boehringer.

Reducing wasted miles saves time (labor costs) and fuel and maximizes both material collected and billable hours in the case of mobile shredding units.

One of the difficulties in creating software for secure destruction routes versus such a program for delivery companies is the number of variables.

"The shredding industry is extremely detailed and service-intense," remarks Boehringer. "Shredding paper is the least of what needs to be done."

Beyond the importance of mapping out a route that keeps mileage in check and minimizes time misspent at each stop, a good routing software program can also improve customer service in a number of ways.

One of the key variables can be invoicing and payment, with different customers having different preferences. "When the shredding is off site, the invoice is definitely later, but you still might need to get the weight," notes Keating. "The on-site shredding can be a little more complicated because you could present the invoice right there and even collect payment right there."

Other invoicing considerations include whether the invoice is tied to the number of containers, to the time spent shredding material or to the weight of material collected. Issuing certificates of destruction, which can be provided on-the-spot by mobile shredding units, may also have to be factored into the checklist, as can value-added services, such as recording the document or product destruction process with a video or Web cam.

The use of global positioning system (GPS) tracking can help solve another potential customer service glitch: unexpected file room clean-outs. With GPS, a destruction company can call on the nearest truck to help out in such a situation.

Many potential buyers are concerned about the bugs that can occur when adopting new software. Regarding potential snags, Boehringer says, "Shredding companies [can] run into scheduling, pricing, paperwork and invoicing issues on their first day" with a new software, although he says EZshred customers should not expect such glitches.

He outlines what he hopes his customers will experience when converting to his company’s routing software: "We had a client who obtained his first large hospital account even before his first truck was delivered. The hospital was so impressed with the detail and professionalism of his sample service tickets and invoices that they trusted him with their business almost immediately."

Beyond appearances, the software should then help a destruction company follow through with outstanding service. "The shredding company is supposed to get all of these details right, every time, all the time," says Boehringer. "If not, competitors are knocking on the client’s door claiming that they can, and often at a better price, because they route their trucks better."

The author is editor of Secure Destruction Business and can be reached via e-mail at btaylor@SDBmagazine.com.