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No one would argue against the potential efficiency gains if you can contact your drivers on the road, and the first reaction of many operators is to look at the cost of mobile phones. Most are under L100—problem solved, you think, until you start adding up the bills: connection charges, monthly rental, the driver calling home, itemised billing and your BT bill going through the roof as you call the drivers.
N133 users don't have these problems: the only bill they receive is the monthly subscription because calls are free. Its twoway radio communications network covers over 90% of UK businesses but subscription charges can be minimised by choosing the coverage to suit your operation. You only pay for the coverage you select. NB3 divides the UK into eight regions and three "Super Regions", there are also 70 local areas as well as national coverage. If your vehicles only run locally, the monthly bill can be as low as £12.50 per unit plus £25 for a dispatcher. Those working in a wider area find plenty of options such as Super North' (regions 4, 5, 6 and 7) to cover their area of operation. Even if you need coverage from Fraserburgh to Falmouth the bill is only £39 per unit per month. Those with operations in and around the major cities will find NB3's Metro Services a costeffective option. Metro Capital covers central London; Metro London gives coverage beyond the M25, including Gatwick. The Midlands conurbation (Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton) is covered by Metro Central while the ManchesterLiverpool area is covered by Metro North-West. Monthly tariffs start from £18 and again, all calls are free.
Equipping your fleet with NB3 is more expensive than with mobile phones but the extra cost can soon be recouped against call charges.
Hauliers' two biggest headaches are cost and downtime: both add to the amount to be recouped from a job before any profit is made. But when expenditure increases the efficiency of the operation, it's worthwhile Many times you can't even tell from the casual glance that someone is using NB3 instead of a mobile phone; they can look very similar. The models that look like mobile phones use keypad dialling—with the more traditional looking microphone you click through the numbers until you get to the one you need.
Equipment for the cab costs around £200 and would take a trained fitter around two hours to install. The antenna is usually fitted to the roof behind the spoiler. This requires a lOmm hole to be drilled and 350mm of clear roof all round. A 10A dropper (24V to 12V) is also needed. When a vehicle comes up for disposal the unit can be removed and fitted into the replacement truck (the dropper and antenna are left in-place).
Some operators prefer to fit the radio on a slide mount, allowing the unit to be removed and replaced at will. This not only allows ease of transfer when a vehicle is leaving the fleet, but also easy transfer from one vehicle to another when they are working alternate shifts.
Back at base you will need a dispatcher unit which costs around £500. You can choose if all calls are routed through the dispatcher or direct from one mobile to another.
To make a call, the driver keys in the number he wants and is connected: after one minute the call is cut off but if the conversation has not finished, pressing a single button will reconnect Having monitored call durations. NB3 says the average call lasts 40 seconds,. "You can get a lot of information across in that time," says Brian Arbuckle, NB3's marketing services manager.
The operational advantages of NB3 are not confined to talking to your drivers; the system can offer mobile data communication, satellite tracking. and even routefincling to dodge traffic jams.
Many voice messages are simply: "Have unloaded","I am loading", "Just left pick up" or "Just arrived at destination". But it can be frustrating if a driver is out of his cab when a call comes in or he makes a mistake noting down details like the collection point for the next load. If that is the case in your fleet, mobile data communication could be the answer. In these cases the data is transmitted (instead of a voice) via the NB3 network. The limitation on what can be sent and received is more dependant on the data equipment in the cab and back at base than on NB3's capability.
The first step in data communications is Messenger. This allows messages to be sent from a personal computer directly to the driver of an NB3-equipped vehicle. The Messenger terminal plugs into the NB3 radio in the cab; any computer using DOS, IBM or Windows operating systems can be used back at base.
Any message can be sent to the driver. It comes up on a display and there is an alarm in the cab to signal that one has arrived. Up to 30 messages can be stored in cases where drivers are not in the cab or are on the road when the message is received. Drivers can return status messages (Code 1 means "Have loaded", for example) without making voice contact, This status signal then feeds directly back into the PC to keep the traffic controller up to date. Net Comm takes this a step further. If a delivery driver is visiting a customer who requests certain items urgently, the driver can interrogate the main stock computer via Net Comm. This enables instant answers to customer needs without having to rely on personnel back at base having to input the right part number. Your driver can then tell the customer whether the required item is in stock; he can also order it for the next delivery, supply a price and even issue an invoice.
NI33 can also help with security Tracker is the name of Integrated Security Group's satellite location system, which works through '_03.
When a vehicle is fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) hardware, the on board computer can work out where it is by taking readings from satellites orbiting the earth. Normally the location is then transmitted up to one of the satellites and back to earth, into the phone lines and back to base. This is expensive, especially as regular updates are necessary if a vehicle is to be tracked properly.
to send the messages back to base.
The on.board equipment determines its position in the normal way, but instead of being beamed back up to a satellite the message is sent via NB3. While there is a small subscription charge on top of the normal monthly rental for the radio gear, sending and receiving messages four times an hour is still free, just-in-time deliveries are always a headache but, with traffic congestion seeming to get worse year-on-year, they can easily become a nightmare. Being warned of a hold-up in time to take another route could be the difference between making or missing your slot. If you need such information then you need Trafficmaster.
From the end of March Trafficmaster will cover 2,000 miles of motorway and trunk road between Dover and Dundee. The system uses a series of infra-red sensors on the bridges collecting information about the speed and direction of traffic.
When the traffic speed drops below 30mph a signal is fed back to Trafficmaster's National Traffic Data Centre for analysis before being sent to a paging system in equipped vehicles.
In the cab a box containing the traffic speed and direction of the slow moving carriageway will appear on the display unit. NB3 users get a preferential rate on both hardware and subscription.
So there you have it. Buy a mobile phone and pay call charges: buy NB3 and avoid call charges while gaining all the information you need to keep your fleet moving efficiently and securely.