Last month, we had the opportunity to talk with some of the team members at E.R. Snell. As a contracting company that has been in business for over 95 years, E.R. Snell has experienced significant growth and has transformed into a multi-division operation with several asphalt plants throughout the state of Georgia. With this expansion in operations, the company has also seen an increase in its trucking department. E.R. Snell works primarily with third-party trucking companies. Before partnering with FleetWatcher, the company had issues with communicating with dispatch and knowing who each truck worked for.
Asphalt Administrator, Caleb Hollis, is a daily user of FleetWatcher. He explained the company’s process for issuing FleetWatcher devices and how the devices have helped improve production. “The way we issue devices to the third party is by letting the vendor handle it. We issue trackers to vendors and they hand them out and ask the third-party truck to use the tracking number instead of the truck number when at the plants. This way we can make sure we are getting the trucks we are ordering from each vendor and also paying the correct vendor for the trucks on the job” Caleb continued, “Before FleetWatcher, dispatch was handled by text and phone calls. To say the least, it was a mess.” With Third-party trucks, the team at E.R. Snell would set them each up to a specific vendor and order trucks by vendor. Before FleetWatcher, it was not always clear who each truck was working for. Now, the team always knows who a truck is working for and knows exactly where they can be reached.
When asked “How does your team feel about the mobile app” Caleb commented, “The mobile app has been great for the managers to keep up with production and trucks in route to the jobs. It has been great for the plant production feature which allows us to keep up with our private sales and liquid needs at the plants.”
E.R. Snell’s Project Coordinator, Mitzi, mentioned that FleetWatcher has also integrated well with their accounting system called Viewpoint. Mitzi went on to say “We were able to sync up job master information into project creation and updates within FleetWatcher with the help of the customization team. They have been very accommodating with some of our more specialized requirements. The Define Export module is user friendly and has enabled us to arrange the data for streamlined processing into Viewpoint.” The team at E.R. Snell is happy with the results they’ve seen with FleetWatcher and plans to continue to cut down on trucking inefficiencies and improve communication.
