Maverick Transportation is a Little Rock–Arkansas based transportation and logistics company. Maverick operates over 1500 trucks coast-to-coast, in Canada and to Mexico providing customized logistics solutions. Logistics solutions are provided through variety of trucks such as Flatbed, Pneumatic, Temperature Control, etc.
Maverick has a mission to deliver the highest quality services by selecting, training and supporting the best drivers in the industry. It has a program which aims at having drivers at home on weekend. Maverick needed a system which can help the Fleet Managers to achieve the aim of this program.
Background And Objectives
The Maverick Fleet Managers have to balance customer demands, equipment and promises to the drivers to “get them home on time”. One of the ways to balance these needs is load swap among the drivers. The process of changing drivers (known as ‘Swap’) involves multiple steps of identification, selection and cost benefit analysis to make the right decision for the customer, the driver and for Maverick. Also, to ensure highest quality of service to their customers, Fleet Managers needed plan for Repower (dispatch the load through another truck) and Relay (ensure the load keeps on moving continuously through sequence of drivers).
The whole process requires experience and expertise about the geography, routes, loads, drivers, etc. In order to streamline the process, Maverick wanted Decision Support System to make a good decision.
Some of the objectives of this project were:
Map-based interface to visualize the current location of drivers and loads
Completely remove dependency on multiple tools for calculation, analysis, etc.
Define approach for identification of swap need and to aid decision making
Provide all related information such as current location, truck type, current load, etc. through single platform to help in quick decision
Provide ability to perform cost analysis for various combinations of swap candidates and locations
Maverick wanted to have minimal capital expenditure on platform
GIS-based Decision Support System
Maverick implemented a GIS-based decision support system to help the Fleet Managers in making quick and precise decision. The solution is a web-based system which provides intuitive visual interface for the identification of swap candidates. This system makes it easier for a Fleet Manager to find out which driver requires swap, identify good candidates for swap, perform what-if analysis to understand cost-benefit analysis, identify possibilities to repower and ensure relay of the load.
Solution was built in two parts:
A server-side application which ensures the system gets the latest data of the truck locations, routes, and decisions by Fleet Managers
A web front-end application to visualize and retrieve route & driver information, identify candidates for swap, repower or relay and analyze the cost associated with the decision
Reference data such as truck terminals and drivers’ home location was set-up in ArcGIS Online. The web-based front-end performed complex geo-spatial analysis to identify and suggest the best candidates for swap, repower and relay.
Value Addition to Maverick
Provide map based visualization of the routes, driver home locations, etc.
Integrated view of truck locations captured through GPS (AVL feeds)
Defined approach to identify and prioritize the drivers at highest risk, that may be unlikely to reach home on a defined date
Complex geo-spatial analysis to identify the suitable candidates for swap
Analysis and calculation of the cost associated with different strategies
What-if analysis of the different possibilities based on swap candidates and swap locations
Spatial analysis to identify the quickest available repower possibility
Help Fleet Managers in ensuring timely delivery through relay of the load using series of drivers
