Foresight Lights Up Winter

22 August, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

Are-You-Ready-for-the-First-Snowfall

It’s August, the air conditioning is turned up full blast, and all you can think about is… “I hope my snow plows will be ready when the first winter storm hits”. More likely, you’re thinking about a cool drink by the lake, but while you’re not thinking about winter, InterFleet is. Because, as sure as death and taxes, winter is coming.

“Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.”
? Sinclair Lewis, writer, thinker, Nobel laureate

Shouldn’t This Just Work?

Some people mistakenly assume that AVL technology doesn’t need to be checked after a summer of dormancy. “It should just work”, they say. That perception sometimes carries over to vehicles that have had their plow blades removed for summer work and even had their locators removed.

Even if a vehicle sits idle in the yard for six months of summer, you want the assurance that once the first snow storm hits, its AVL capabilities are ready to go. Statistically speaking, the bulk of accident claims are made against municipalities around the time of the first storm of the year, more so than later when drivers are re-acclimatized to winter conditions. If equipment isn’t ready, you can’t use the AVL data to defend against mistaken (or false) claims. Your winter operations department is on the defensive.

Get Your Fleet Ready for the Storm

According to James Dai, Manager of Winter Light Up, having your AVL components checked early produces significant gains. “After we completed the Winter Light Up service for five customers with a total of 199 snow plows, there were only two service tickets. In comparison, for customers who did not sign up for the WLU program, we received five service tickets for ten plows at one municipality, and six service requests from another municipality with over 15 plows. One city only discovered that ten of its winter maintenance vehicles had not even been reporting its controller data—until February!”

Given those kinds of statistics it’s no wonder field managers who’ve learned the value of using the Winter Light Up program well before winter arrives, endorse if fully. “Whatever you’re charging, it’s well worth it”, said Jim Kettle, Technical Specialist at City of Mississauga, Ontario.

Winter Light Up

Winter Light Up is a program from InterFleet that’s designed to ensure your winter operations are running smoothly before Old Man Winter arrives. InterFleet offers experienced project managers, project coordinators, solution engineers, and certified technicians to ensure your fleet is on-time and ready.  By having our Winter Light Up team analyze the technical details of your existing fleet, you are assured that your units have the right configuration files and the accuracy and details of your advanced reports are verified. This gives you the data you need to respond immediately to events as they unfold.

We ensure your spreader controllers, plow sensors, and temperature sensors are working and all locators are reporting as they should, so you get a thorough audit of your winter fleet’s AVL readiness. Let’s manage winter together so you can focus on storm fighting, not your AVL system.

InterFleet logo

For more information about the InterFleet Winter Light Up program, contact your account manager or call
+1 (877) 434-4844 (Option 2).

 

 

Temperature Monitoring – What’s the Right Flavor for You?

4 July, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

 

Webtech-Wireless-Temperature-Monitoring

Don’t Let Your Profits Melt Away

There’s probably nothing sadder than a small child crying over an ice cream cone that melted before he or she could finish it. In the grow-up world, it’s a different kind of sad for a fleet manager to lose an entire truck load of frozen ice cream on route to market—it’s an expensive sad.

Choose What’s Right for You

Depending on the types of vehicles you’re using and your temperature monitoring needs, Webtech Wireless offers two distinct solutions: The WT7000H+ Locator for straight trucks, and the WT2250 Locator for trailers. With either, this sets you apart from your competition by enabling you to monitor the contents of your shipments on route to ensure that they travel within the required temperature specifications.

“There was a night and day difference after Quadrant was deployed at National Foods. Quadrant is a full fleet solution with multiple areas where it can help.”
—Kevin Bookey, Transportation Manager, National Foods

Real Customers, Real Solutions

A Texas-based frozen food distributor, which prides itself in its premium best-selling ice creams, approached us in 2011 to monitor the location, temperature, and door open/close of its mixed fleet of ice cream trucks. Starting with a pilot program installed on eight vehicles, we were able to help them not only reduce content spoilage and monitor its straight trucks and trailers, but having real-time visibility into its vehicles also helped prevent cargo theft as well. By trying out the solution as a pilot, the company was able to certify success before rolling it out to all trucks in the fleet. Webtech Wireless then worked with certified installers to bring fleet GPS tracking to monitor its ice cream for the entire fleet.

Here’s what this frozen food distributor chose:

Fully certified and calibrated temperature probes ruggedized to provide sensitivity and accuracy to be aware of critical temperature swings that could ruin product.

Quadrant Manager Mobile for iPhone, iPad, and Android gave their fleet managers the same mobility to check temperatures and vehicle locations while they themselves are on the road.

Temperature reports set with unique location-based profiles (geofences) enabled fleet managers to identify temperature ranges and distinct thresholds for daily operations and weekend storage.

Automated driver logs, which perfect for fleets that operate in multiple states or jurisdictions. Our award-winning fleet management Quadrant solution supports automated driver logs, ensuring compliancy with the latest HOS (Hours of Service) regulations.

Refresh Yourself

Whether you need to update an older temperature monitoring solution or step up to a GPS fleet tracking solution for the first time, you can expect to reduce unnecessary spoilage and save costs with a Webtech Wireless solution that truly fits your needs.

Contact us today. Don’t let your ice cream melt. Call +1 (866) 287 0135 (Option 2) to discuss your fleet challenges and how our GPS/AVL solutions can help you today.

Webtech Wireless

25 June, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

Role: Technical Marketing Writer (2010–2013) and Technical Writer (2013)

Need: Webtech Wireless is a hardware/software company that helps long-haul and delivery trucking companies, snow removal fleets, and government agency fleets track vehicles (GPS), improve vehicle efficiency (AVL), and remotely control equipment (doors, de-icing in spreaders, engines). To help with their Sales initiatives, Webtech needed a way to translate complex technical information into simple and compelling writing.

Solution:

Initially brought on to catch up with marketing content development, I soon found myself writing and editing a vast array of company documentation:

  • Corporate website (managed in-house website and liaised with third-party service providers)
  • Social media (weekly blogs, media monitoring)
  • Annual and Quarterly Shareholder reports (editing, formatting)
  • Training documentation (training guides, installation guides, job aids)
  • Technology award applications
  • Video scripts (corporate marketing videos)
  • Marketing materials including brochures, Sales presentation, technical specifications, trade show signage, and more

As content editor responsible for proofreading, restructuring and adapting writing from subject matter experts and Sales staff, I also oversaw third-party service providers (translation, graphic design, printing, videography, SEO) and leveraged my knowledge of HTML, CSS, and XML to create and measure SEO-friendly web content (keywords, landing pages, campaigns).

In 2012, Webtech Wireless celebrated its first technology win (Adoption of Technology award celebrated at the 2012 Technology Impact Awards (TIAs)). A key part of this win was the award application itself, which I researched and wrote. When interviewing the CEO of our client company (who adopted our technology), I listened for the key words that would secure our win. Finally, the CEO said “With Webtech Wireless, we’ve doubled our revenue.”

I also assisted the Training department by proposing a radical new approach to training guides. Knowing their audience of truck drivers and trucking fleet managers, I asserted that we needed to take a more visual approach, and one that favoured reading on in-cab portable devices. So instead of a thick user guide with reams of text, I applied a single-source approach, removed about 20% of custom-build information (the Help Desk could handle that), and employed a responsive design approach in InDesign (to improve readability on tablets and portable devices). The Training and Development teams loved it!

Tools used:

  • Quadrant and Interfleet (GPS/AVL fleet tracking software)
  • SalesForce
  • Adobe Create Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Framemaker, Dreamweaver, Acrobat)
  • WordPress
  • Microsoft Office (Word, Excel…)
  • SharePoint (a Microsoft enterprise file-management tool)

Read testimonials about this position…

Testimonial – Course was fresh, broad, and instantly beneficial

27 May, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

Jason’s Writing for the Web course was fresh, broad, and instantly beneficial. Thanks to the social media, blogging, SEO, and marketing techniques I acquired in his course, I was hired as a coordinated web content coordinator for Live to Play Sports (formerly Norco Products Ltd.). My manager counts on me to build a business-to-business and business-to-consumer online presence for the re-launched company, and I have Jason to thank for the Web skills I now use everyday.

—Ulrike, Technical Writing Student, BCIT
(Now Integrated Web Content Coordinator and Brands Liaison at Live to Play Sports)

Testimonial – People Like You Help Make A Difference

22 May, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

The article is so well-written, thoughtful and I cannot begin to tell you how much we appreciate your attention. For a locally owned and operated establishment like ours, people like you help make a difference.

—Shannon Pratuch, PR & Marketing, Jupiter Hotel, Portland Ore.

Partnership Creates Possibilities

16 May, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

Partnership-Webtech-Wireless

At Webtech Wireless, we partner with a range of companies because it helps us focus on our key products and services while offering you a diverse range of solutions.  For example, we have partnered with four of North America most prominent mobility providers to ensure you have the widest area of cellular coverage and that includes cross-border (US and Canada) coverage.

We also have resellers and distributor partners that sell our products and services and specialize in solutions for commercial and government fleet markets. Our OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners embed our hardware products within their products, and leverage the software services we provide to develop and sell a combined offering to their customers.

While we have many partners, this story focuses on profiling three of our partners who have recently provided important integrations:

In-Cab Navigation from ALK Technologies

We partnered with ALK Technologies to bring enhanced in-cab navigation and routing capabilities to our MDT 3100 and Quadrant Manager. ALK CoPilot is an industry-leading truck-specific GPS routing solution designed to provide reliable navigation on truck-legal roads while keeping drivers safe. Fully integrated into the MDT 3100, drivers can seamlessly switch between Hours of Service and navigation.

Fuel Card Integration from FleetCor

We partnered with FleetCor because its fleet card products provided fuel card integration with Quadrant Manager. FleetCor is one of the global leaders in fleet fuel cards and this integration made it easier for our customers to better manage their fleets. For example, data from FleetCor and Quadrant Manager can be used to easily discover discrepancies between the location of fuel purchases and the location of vehicles.

“FleetCor fuel cards provide visibility into when fuel purchases were made and Webtech Wireless provides the location of the vehicle at the time of purchase. It makes the information trail complete for the fleet manager”, says Andrew Paul, VP Commercial Sales.

Traffic Scorecard Reporting from Inrix

“Death, taxes and traffic are often called the three certainties of life”, according to Inrix and, with the ability to provide traffic data points numbering in the trillions, Inrix has shown that it can handle at least the traffic part of the equation. Inrix has carved out a niche for itself as one of the pre-eminent providers of traffic data. What that means our customers is that we can offer utilize that data to increase the profitability and safety of companies operating fleets on busy roads and highways. For example, Coach Canada uses Quadrant reports that rely on Inrix data to ensure its drivers are driving safely. In particular, they can now report on the length of time the vehicle traveled beyond a pre-defined speed and driving behavior issues such as hard breaking or sharp accelerations, indicators of potential dangerous behavior by drivers.

Coach Canada, a leading Canadian commercial bus line, has achieved a variety of internal targets to monitor vehicle speeds, recently announced it had reached and exceeded its safe speed initiative and credited its improvement in overall safety and performance to our Quadrant Manager solution in conjunction with real-time road speed  and posted speed limit data from INRIX®.

Our partnership with Inrix and its successful implementation with Coach Canada have produced some very positive data: “We’ve seen a 90.4 percent reduction in speeding after implementing these Quadrant Features in 2012”.

Partnership Matters

All our partners provide unique solutions that are part of the distinctive GPS fleet management solutions we provide. We’re always expanding the products we offer and our partnerships play a key role in making this possible. For more information on our partners, please email us at info@webtechwireless.com.

Avoiding a Bridge Too Low

4 April, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments

ABridgeTooLow

Known as the “truck-decapitator”, a bridge in Durham, North Carolina found wider fame last fall when it was featured in an Atlantic Cities article on aging infrastructure. An accompanying video, ­“The Toughest Bridge in the World”, featured a montage of ill-fated trucks (set to music from the film Rocky) getting peeled like sardine cans as they career under the century-old railway bridge. To make matters worse, wilting commentary from amused readers specifically targeted the hapless truckers. There were also some helpful suggestions, but none thought to propose a GPS navigation system that could route truckers away from these kinds of dangerous roads.

Bridging the Knowledge Gap

Many small and independent trucking companies, in a misguided attempt to put cost savings ahead of other concerns, purchase off-the-shelf GPS navigation systems that don’t provide enough detail for truckers to avoid these disasters. They’re buying consumer GPS navigation systems designed primarily for cars where there is little concern about height clearances and other routing conditions needed by commercial truckers.

The situation is serious enough that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is now distributing visor cards to truck drivers warning them that consumer-oriented GPS navigation devices pose life-threatening risks to truck drivers. FMCSA also faulted trucking operators with ineffective driver training and therefore advised operators to get their drivers trained on industry-standard commercial grade GPS navigation systems.

Truck-Specific GPS Navigation

In a complementary article in Overdrive (March 11, 2013), U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer stated that trucks using inappropriate GPS systems, which don’t support routing around “low bridges, hazmat routes and other information relevant to truckers”, are the chief cause of bridge strikes.

FMCSA Recommends

Michael Scott, Software Engineer at Webtech Wireless says, “We have chosen to integrate our MDT 3100s with a truck-specific GPS navigation solution that supports the kind of truck routing the FMCSA wants truck drivers to use”. He’s referring with our partnership with ALK Technologies to enhance our Quadrant® In-Cab solution by adding ALK CoPilot® In-Cab navigation.  Michael went on to point out that while we meet all the requirements the FMCSA recommended for “safe use of GPS navigation systems”, drivers still need to be alert to road signage. “No GPS navigation system absolves drivers from responsibility on safe routes”.

By selecting a GPS navigation system intended for use by professional truck and bus drivers, ensuring drivers are properly trained in its use, and remaining alert to changing conditions, you can expect to navigate safely to your destination.

Navigating the Digital Oil Field

18 February, 2013 / Jason Hall / No comments 
Type: Blog post
Objective: Describe "digital oil field" technology
Purpose: Improving budgeting and forecasting
Audience: Decision-makers of OnG trucking fleets

Navigating the Digital Oil Field

With supplies of easy oil running low, oil and gas companies are increasingly turning to technology to help them get the most out of the extraction process. Around the world, energy companies are advancing the limits of digital oil field technology, a recently coined term to describe this emerging segment of the industry.

The “digital oil field” describes computer technology deployed to automate oil and gas extraction, and it has been given a lot of attention for good reason. Digital oil field technology aids a wide array of Oil & Gas activities from exploration, surveying, development, and well completion to data integration of seismic imaging, drilling, process completion, reservoir modeling, and production optimization. This information is then fed to data centers in real-time, allowing experts in the industry to optimize production and minimize downtimes. According to Booz & Company, a leading global management consulting firm, “digital oil field technologies could increase the net present value of oil and gas assets by 25%.” The global digital oil field market is estimated to be worth $18.7 billion and is forecast to reach $33.3 billion by 2022.

While not generally included within the description of digital oil field technologies, telematics operates on the same principle—making better business decisions because you have the data to show where your vehicles are and what your drivers are doing in real-time. For example, with an automated tool for tracking vehicle whereabouts, IFTA fuel-tax information is gathered automatically and therefore accurately, and these accuracies save you substantial revenue from higher taxes. Also, you don’t miss out on additional savings if you operate in jurisdictions in which offer off-road usage earns fuel-tax credits.

As data accumulates over time, your ability to budget and forecast improves exponentially because you have accurate and historical data at your fingertips.

 

Moving: The Cat’s Meow

7 December, 2012 / Jason Hall / No comments

When you help me downsize my house, a hungry kitten gets fed.

 

That’s right, I’m aligning with the BC SPCA (Vancouver) to ensure the contents of my house are sold and I can move to a smaller living space. In the process, I’m donating a portion of the sale proceeds to the SPCA.

 

There’s a showing at my house this Sunday afternoon (Dec. 9) from 2 to 5 pm.
See what’s for sale.

 

What’s in it for me? I get to share in the spirit of Christmas.

Moving: When a raven is like a writing desk

6 December, 2012 / Jason Hall / No comments

Moving house is always mad, mad, and more mad. And this move is the maddest of all. This is the big downsize move in which I turn a three-story house into a one-bedroom condo.

Downsizing

To that end, I have a vast number of things to divest myself of (ranging from appliances and antiques to curios and gardening tools). With Christmas just around the corner, I’d like to view this more as an opportunity to make some important changes in my life in a way that benefits others. So, instead of a personal liquidation sale, it’s my way to lighten my load—a bourgeois potlatch, so to speak. Some items I’m selling, some I’m asking you to donate to a local charity, and some I’m giving away.

 

 

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