To improve service, courier companies embrace wireless data technology
Timothy Menard is cruising up Interstate 55, en route to his Lisle pickup, when a female voice breaks over the black, paperback-sized wireless data terminal on the seat next to him.
"New job. Please acknowledge job."
The driver for Chicago-based Cannonball Courier Services has 30 seconds to respond before the digital message is repeated. He hits the acknowledge key, and job No. 1673 scrolls across the screen: a pickup in Plainfield, close to his current location, for delivery in Naperville. He pulls off the expressway and heads for Plainfield.
Less than an hour later later, Mr. Menard hands a receptionist at a Naperville design firm an envelope; she signs on the tiny signature window of the terminal's message pad, and Mr. Menard hits the transmit button, sending the digitized signature to Cannonball's downtown message server. The data are time-stamped, entered into the job database and routed to a fax server, where a letter notifying the customer of the delivery is queued for transmission.
Two of these $1,200 terminals named "Acknowledger" are being field-tested by Cannonball. Management believes they will revolutionize the courier business.
A handful of Chicago-area couriers are moving beyond the traditional tools of the trade - radios and one-way pagers - and toward a new generation of wireless data technology. In doing so, they hope to streamline delivery operations, offer customers timely proof of delivery and improve their bottom lines.
The technology enables dispatchers to send to and receive from their drivers delivery information, replacing the industry-standard pagers and walkie-talkies.
Until recently, wireless data technology was limited to large international carriers such as Memphis, Tenn.-based Federal Express Corp. and Atlanta-based United Parcel Service of America Inc.
But falling hardware costs and off-the-shelf software are making the technology accessible. to a broader market.
"Before, only big guys like Fed Ex or UPS could afford it. Now, it's available to smaller companies," says Joseph Shayovitch, president of Wireless Links Inc. of Rutherford, N.J., which introduced Acknowledger and a $15,000 dispatch software program last August.
In the Chicago market, nearly 125 courier services compete for $100 million annually in same-day deliveries. They employ an army of bike messengers and drivers who deliver everything from time-sensitive contracts to human organs. Larger courier companies handle up to several thousand packages a day.
The industry's pace can be daunting.
"The biggest challenge is keeping on top of the technology - it's changing so rapidly," says Phyllis Appelbaum, president of Chicago-based Arrow Messenger Service Inc., who founded her company in 1974. "Before, all you needed was a bike and phone."
Says Cannonball President John Rozran, "Business people are under tremendous time pressure. They don't want to wait for things. The question we're asked all the time is, 'What's the latest I can work and still get it there at such-and-such time?'"
Technology is a critical component in this business.
"People think of (courier service) as a low-tech business, but the coordination involves a lot of technology," says Cannonball Management Information Systems Director James Gorman, a former Citicorp vice-president.
According to Edward Moreland, executive director of the Messenger Courier Assn. of the Americas in Washington, D.C., which represents roughly 9,000 same-day couriers nationwide, the industry has made major strides over the last five years to computerize dispatch centers, which typically operate with pagers and radios.
But if Mr. Shayovitch has his way, radios and pagers may soon become a thing of the past.
Carriers have embraced wireless data technology to meet the demands of their customers - who have come to expect proof of delivery and other information about their shipments - and handle increases in delivery volume.
Demand falls short
"Information about a delivery has become as important as the delivery itself," says Eric Field, Cannonball's sales manager, a 20-year industry veteran. "Our public has been educated by Federal Express. They're more sophisticated and more aware of what they can get."
Originally developed to provide communications for computer service technicians, wireless data networks like RAM Mobil Data of Woodbridge, N.J. (recently acquired by Atlanta-based BellSouth) and Ardis - a subsidiary recently put on the block by Schaumburg-based Motorola Inc. - are built on a nationwide network of radio transmitters.
But demand for both services, which have been operational since the early 1990s, has fallen short of expectations.
Mr. Shayovitch believes dispatch represents the ideal use of wireless data services and hopes Acknowledger will become the "Netscape of mobile data," referring to the world's most popular Internet browser.
He foresees a day when customers will place Internet orders that will be automatically routed to the nearest driver by a courier service's server, eliminating the need for a human dispatcher.
But a successful wireless system requires all of the pieces to be in place - a mobile terminal with a radio modem, communications software and the network itself.
"We're the last ones to eat on the mobile data food chain," says Richard Miller, a transportation account manager for RAM.
Until recently, it's been slim pickings. The cost of wireless terminals has made it cost-prohibitive for all but the largest carriers.
But the advent of notebook computer technology has driven down both the size and cost of computers, modems and other hardware. This breakthrough led to Acknowledger and a $650 clam-shaped wireless terminal called the Interactive Pager manufactured by Ontario-based -Research in Motion, which also offers text-to-voice, fax and e-mail communications. Unlike Acknowledger, which captures and transmits a digital pickup signature, with the Interactive Pager, a driver must key in the name.
Randy Seiler, president of Schaumburg-based Quick Delivery Services Inc., began experimenting with wireless technology five years ago. The 15-year-old company was the first to deploy the Interactive Pager in the U.S. last year. Mr. Seiler has subsequently equipped his 65 drivers with the RAM-marketed device.
"It's not so complicated that drivers can't use it and not so simple that it doesn't have features," says Mr. Seiler.
According to Mr. Seiler, the hand-sized, two-way pager is the answer for proof of delivery.
"Our dispatchers see a world of difference. They point and click and it's done. It saves a tremendous amount of time and money," he says.
The pager works with Windows-based dispatch software that Mr. Seiler developed at Quick Delivery and began selling to other courier companies through his QuickComm Inc. subsidiary. The software package starts at around $21,000.
One of QuickComm's Chicago customers, Apex Courier Ltd., upgraded to the Interactive Pager and Mr. Seiler's software four months ago.
"The new unit gives us instantaneous paging, time stamps communications and enables us to key in messages," says Denise Mahmud, who started Apex with her husband, a former bike messenger, four years ago. "It all goes back to service. We offer 15-minute delivery, so we need to get to our drivers instantaneously."
Not problem-free
The transition to new technology is not without problems.
At Cannonball's office, near the end of its field test, Cannonball's custom Unix-based dispatch system has stopped communicating with the Acknowledger terminals in the field. The link has been down all week, and the atmosphere in the operations center is harried.
Technologist Mr. Gorman, who has tested a plethora of devices over the years, is determined that the problem is at Cannonball's site and is down on his knees checking cable leads.
"I'm just glad we're in a test mode and I don't have 60 of these things out in the field," he says.
"When it's working, it will be far superior to anything else," says operations manager John Mucci. "It's what we've dreamed about."
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