Xata Corp., a Minneapolis-based provider of onboard fleet management systems for private fleet transportation, has announced that Holbrook Lumber, an East Coast distributor of lumber and building materials, has selected Xatanet to automate fleet compliance and accelerate utilization of fleet resources.
Holbrook Lumber is a wholesale supplier of premium lumber and building materials and has been in business since 1911. Holbrook covers New York, New England and northern New Jersey and services independent retail lumber dealers. “We wanted to invest in a product with all the features we required,not just vehicle location or mobile communications,” says Mike Negus, transportation manager for Holbrook Lumber. “Xatanet provided us everything we needed to fully automate compliance and improve utilization of our mobile resources at a cost a smaller fleet could afford.”
Before installing Xatanet, Holbrook drivers spent 30 minutes each day manually completing a daily trip report, from which administration would extract information to monitor driver logs and complete a fuel tax spreadsheet for state line crossings. With multistop routes ranging up to 400 miles per day and multiple state line crossings, this manual, time-intensive paperwork and tracking proved cumbersome and costly, the company says.
With Xatanet, Holbrook says it has automated data capture, driver log handling and fuel tax reporting for state line crossings; and it also has real-time and back-office visibility of driver, vehicle, route and delivery performance and status. Holbrook also previously used cell phones for mobile communications, but that proved costly and unreliable, limiting its ability to impact service levels, track vehicle location or make last-minute routing changes effectively.
“We rely on our fleet to provide timely delivery to our customers and depend on our drivers to maintain a high level of service and satisfaction as part of the process,” says Mike Negus, transportation manager for Holbrook. “The system was self-explanatory for drivers, requiring minimal instruction, and they loved how much easier it makes their jobs and ours.”
