Wialon – Track couriers via power banks

Wialon – Track couriers via power banks

Companies have probably asked about how to connect private cars of self-employed couriers to the monitoring system. Drivers are against this idea and in most cases they refuse to work under such conditions. Thus, delivery companies are not able to control a greater share of their staff.

This is where Wialon specialists came with the idea of installing a strategic “Beacon Pocket” tracker in power bank.

One of Kyiv’s delivery service, Dimex, involves couriers driving private vehicles. As the company was growing, they thought about how to increase productivity and optimize the working hours of couriers. In order to achieve this, they had to :

1. Analyze and equally distribute tasks between couriers
2. Control delivery time
3. Track actual mileage in trips for car allowance calculation

Without GPS tracking, the company was unable to achieve it. However, drivers always found excuses not to install tracking devices on their vehicles. They said that car is under warranty or they will join another company. For that reason, Dimex offered them non-standard and almost invisible personal tracker.

Hardware

Drivers got power bank-like tracking devices integrated with Wialon.

The soft spot of self-powered trackers is the battery. Usually, the devices send data once a day to save battery power for years. But whenever it starts sending data every 10 minutes, the tracker won’t stay for more than a week. This is because, to transmit data, such tracker should restart from a sleep mode, receive coordinates, and send those to the server. The previous process uses large amount of energy and cannot be optimized. As such, the devices are often set-up as beacons which provide broken-line tracks rather than smooth ones. We can use them to detect the location of a stolen vehicle or cargo.

Monitoring Plus specialists / Wialon sub-dealers from Ukraine, adjusted Beacon Pocket trackers to the project. The devices are always connected to the vehicle via USB. They stay with a driver every time and are useful to charge other electronic devices, like smartphones. It often sends messages and acts as an entire AVL which provides detailed tracks for each courier. Due to its visual appearance, the drivers are not aware that they are being tracked. Meanwhile, the device always sends data on their movements to Wialon.

In Logistics, dispatchers create orders, distribute them between couriers as well as optimize routes. Besides, if a courier has free time after a delivery, a dispatcher can add another order. He can also adjust the route for the new client.

Dispatchers analyze couriers’ trips in Wialon Local. They view the track and see where the driver has been. They watch markers on the map to check forbidden stops and reports to count inactive time and time in trips. This helps to analyze the tasks to re-distribute it among couriers in Logistics.

Moreover, in Wialon they create geofences of 2 km radius around delivery points. When a courier enters the geofence, the client gets a warning that the courier is near.

In a period of four month, Dimex brought fair results :

1. Costs on distance-related profit and transport depreciation reduced by 30%
2. Operating revenue of the business increased by 5% due to a larger number of goods delivered and increased clients’ loyalty