Dispatch and Asset Management - Part 2 - Basic Dispatching

Text Transcript:

Hey, this is Derek again. This is going to be part two of our series on dispatching and asset tracking and management. So in the first video, we kind of covered the basics on the asset map and the dispatch board and just kind of give you an overall review on how to create bins, create types, and do some setup and then just a little walkthrough of the pages.

In this video, I'm going to give an example, a few examples here of how to create a dispatch or create a request for drop-off, do some pickups, and then also show you how to do that as purely as a dispatcher, but then also if you wanted to get your drivers involved in the process as well, I'll show you examples on how your drivers can do some of this very easily. So let's get started. All right, so I'm in the dispatch board screen and I've got all of these unassigned allocated bins on the left-hand side.

So I've got six of these allocated and then I've already got a few of these cards lined up for the drivers. So these are basically tasks or jobs for the drivers set up already for them. I've got three drivers.

I got Bob, Johnny, and Jimmy, and they all have tasks to do for today. And just real quick, what I can do in this screen is I can actually order these jobs by dragging these around. So I can prioritize these based on how I feel which ones are most important.

So if I've got a customer out there that is really, really needing one right away, I can drag this around. If I want to look at Johnny's stuff here first in this first position, I can move him around. So you can do a little bit of drag and drop, but this is kind of a nice tool to play around with.

So let's do a brand new dispatch. Let's say a customer is called up and they're requesting a 30-yard bin, for example. So let's click on Add New Dispatch up in the right-hand corner.

I'm going to find the customer that I want to send this to. So let's say Beck Manufacturing is requesting this. All I have to do is look them up in the list if they're already a customer.

If they're not, you're going to want to create a customer in the system with the address and their contact information and that kind of thing, and that's going to get pulled in. So their default address is going to get pulled in here. Their contact person is going to get pulled in, and so is their phone number.

There is a button here, this plus button, that you can use if they're not wanting you to deliver that container to their main address. Let's say they want it to be delivered across the street or downtown or wherever, maybe a construction job somewhere. You can look that up and add another location just by clicking that plus button.

I'll skip that for now. All right, so let's say Beck Manufacturing and this guy Boris over there is requesting a 30-yard bin. So I'm going to say it's a 30-yard bin, and let's say since it's a manufacturing place, let's see if we have some steel turnings or something like that.

Let's see. Yeah, so steel turnings. Let's say that's what they're going to be filling that container up with.

And let's go a little bit further. It's going to be a delivery drop-off. I'm the dispatcher, so it's going to default to me.

If you have another dispatcher, you can select them, but by default, it's going to be whoever's logged in. I can choose a driver at this point, but more than likely, you're not ready to assign it to a driver yet. So you'll just leave that blank, same thing with the truck.

Now, the note field would be anything you want to communicate to your driver. So let's just say, let's ask for Boris and the special instructions. Let's say there's a gate code here.

You can provide your driver with that so they can get access in there, or like a hazard, you know, hey, there's some electrical wire above that you need to worry about, or a large pot hole or something like that, or just instructions on, hey, they want this dropped off in the back warehouse or something like that. You can also put in a scheduled time, and let's say it's going to be a little later in the day, four o'clock in the day, put that in there, and then you can save it. So once this is saved, it's going to create an unassigned card here on the left-hand side.

You see that it says Beck Manufacturing, it gives it a dispatch number, and it tells us that it's a delivery drop-off, it tells you the notes and the time that you're supposed to do it and what kind of asset it is. Now, right now, it's unassigned, so none of my drivers are going to see this yet, but when I'm ready to give this to somebody, all I have to do is drag this on over, just by dragging and dropping it, and let's just give it to Johnny here in the middle. So I've dragged it over, now it's assigned to Johnny.

Now Johnny can click on this now, and there's going to be some information in there, you can select the actual location, and then if Google Maps' Street View is available, it'll show that as well, give him an idea of what he's going to. It's got email, it's got contact information, and phone, and the type of job that he's doing, and it's also the type of container that he's supposed to be bringing. At this point, if you're the dispatcher, you can tell it which container it is, and it's going to only show you the ones that are available of that type.

But most of the time, our yards like to use the phone, give the drivers access to it on their phone, so that they can choose which container it is, because at this point, your dispatcher is not necessarily going to know what specific container number it is that they're going to be delivering, but your driver will, once they grab it, put it on their truck, and go. So again, you can do that, you can handle this all from your dispatcher, if that's what you're used to doing, or you can give it to your drivers, or you can give it to just some of your drivers that you think are a little bit more tech-savvy with it. It's really up to you guys.

Let me go ahead and minimize this one here, and log in as that driver. So on the right-hand side, you'll see this is the driver view. The driver, when he logs into your public IP, he'll be able to put in his login information.

So he puts in his username and password that you've assigned to him, and as soon as that loads, you'll see that he sees both of the jobs that you've assigned to him. So he's got a delivery and a pickup, and so you notice, you're probably going to want to do this in order, right? So you're going to want to drop this, do the delivery first, and then the pickup later. So let's show that.

You can drag and drop these and prioritize them in order. So I'm going to put that drop-off to Beck Manufacturing first. He's going to pick up a 30-yarder, deliver it out in the field, and then on his way back, he's going to grab this other one, which looks like it's a front-end load, to bring back.

So let's refresh this on the right-hand side, and that's going to show you that that did get refreshed, and it's showing now that drop-off first, and then that pickup second. So what our driver Johnny here is going to do, he's going to click on this to see more detail. It's going to load for us.

We'll see the location, and then had we had Street View, it would have shown that as well. He's going to go and select the container that he's going to do now. He's probably going to grab the one that's most convenient for him to grab, unless you've specified otherwise.

If you've specified for a specific bin for him to grab, then he would grab that one. It would already be shown here, and he'd grab it. Otherwise, he's going to just pick the one that's most convenient for him.

So let's do this one, let's do 30-003, and he's going to select this. He's got his notes and special instructions that you put in there. He knows that he's going to have a gate code, and the person he's going to ask for.

He can put additional notes in here if he wants to, like say something like, oh, there's some damage on this bin, or there's a bunch of oil at the bottom of it, or something like that. He could put additional notes, and that's just going to append to that dispatch ticket. These notes also do flow through to your actual tickets in ScrapRight, so we'll see that later on in another video.

He can, at this point, also take pictures of this that will be available. They'll be available as attachments, ultimately, on the tickets. So he can do that directly from his phone.

It'll open up the native camera on his phone, and he can take multiple pictures. That's an option from here. I'm going to skip that, but let's go ahead and start this trip.

This is saying that our driver, Johnny, is picking up bin number 30-003, and he's going to be delivering it to Beck Manufacturing, and he's starting the trip now. So once I click this, it's going to load, and once that finishes loading, I'm going to refresh the screen in the dispatcher screen, and you'll see that that is going to go from being an un-actioned card to one that is now yellow, and it's in transit as a drop-off. Now, if I go over to my asset map, you'll now see this one will get a yellow dot instead of a red dot or a green dot, and you'll know that that one is in transit as well.

So I've got now 42 total bins, six of them are allocated and just sitting there, 29 are available, and I've got seven in transit. So one of these is that one we just did. Let's go back to the dispatch board.

Okay, so this Beck Manufacturing job number 16 is now locked because Johnny has now told us that he is on his way to go deliver that, so I won't be able to take this and drag it to another driver unless he releases it and says, you know, like say he gets a flat tire or you call him off to go do something else, he can cancel this job if he wants to. But barring that, you know, we're pretty sure he's going over there to go deliver this bin. All right, so let's go back to Johnny's screen, and let's say Johnny has actually arrived at the location.

So once he gets there, he's going to click on this expand button here, it's going to load the details, and we'll be able to go down, and he'll be able to scroll through here, add any notes, you know, so hey, there was a, Boris wasn't there, but I was able to talk to his uncle, and that's who I signed off to. Speaking of signing off to, you can actually have your driver hand this off to the person at the place that you're delivering it to, and they can sign it just like that with their finger on your driver's phone, as long as they've got a smartphone. So now, let's say that Johnny has actually dropped this off.

We could put a note here that says, put it in the back near, I don't know, near the warehouse or something like that. So that's going to be appended also, so you'll be able to see that later. And once he's done doing that, you can click finish this trip.

That's going to then tell the system that that bin has been dropped off at that company's location, and it's going to be now changed from being an in-transit bin to an allocated bin that is going to disappear from Johnny's queue. You saw that happen on the right-hand side, but it's also going to disappear from the dispatcher's view, and it's going to show up here down at the bottom. So now, if you look down here at the bottom, it's got deck manufacturing.

It was allocated, and the notes are added on there that are appended to what we had before. So ask for Boris, and then he says, I put it in the back near the warehouse. Down here, I've got the number of days that it's been sitting there, it's been allocated.

So I've got zero days, but tomorrow it's going to say one, and the next day it will say two and three and so on and so forth. That's a good way for you to see inactivity on these, so you need to get these back into circulation, so you're not wasting money on it. All right, so that one has been dropped off now, and it's just going to sit there until you tell it to either get picked up or do an exchange, or whatever other action you want to do with it.

And you'll do it the same way. If you're going to do a pickup, you're going to click on it, you're going to schedule a pickup, and then you're going to sign it to a driver, the driver's going to go out and pick it up. So let's do that other one.

So let's say our driver, Johnny, was out there, and the next thing he's got to do is go pick up this other bin that's on his list. So he sees here that he's got Liberty Mountain Resort in Fairfield, Pennsylvania, and he has to pick up this front-end loader. And so what he'll do next is he'll click on this, on the dropdown, and he's going to scroll down here, he can put any notes, but he says, all right, I'm going to start my trip, I'm on my way out to that location to go pick up that job.

So it's going to load, and then back at your yard, your dispatcher, once they refresh their screen, they'll see that same update happening on their screen. All right, so let's refresh the dispatcher screen, and it'll go from ready for pickup to awaiting pickup. So Johnny is now on his way.

Now, one key point in this part of the process, since Johnny is now on his way to Liberty Mountain Resort to pick up this front-end load container, it actually does create a ticket, a scrap write ticket, in the system. So it tells us here, ticket number 1240. This is a payable ticket now that's going to be created in the system.

So now if I were to go into my regular ticketing screen or my search for ticket screen, I'm going to see that there is an open ticket for Liberty Mountain Resort for the material that this was assigned to us. And when they bring it back, they'll be able to weigh that and pay them out. So, all right, so the next thing we're going to do is have Johnny arrive at the location.

So he's going to go to Liberty Mountain Resort. He is going to expand this again, and he's going to pick this up. So he's arrived at this location where that bin was at, and he's going to go down here.

If he wanted to add notes, he can. If he wants to add pictures, he can as well. And he's going to say, I'm finishing the trip.

So once he does this, it's going to then take it off of his to-do list. He's now basically without any new tasks to do. We'll refresh it over here on this side.

And now Johnny has no more jobs to do for the day. And he might call in and ask you for, you know, more actions to do or you may be just done for the day. So that was a pickup and actually a drop-off and a pickup.

And that's kind of a basic look at the dispatching and how that works. If you wanted to move these around and give this to someone else, you can drag that over. You could drag these off and give this to whichever driver is available at the time.

So you'll be working with your drivers, you know, still maintaining contact. But this gives you a way to kind of give them a list of things to do for the day, for the next few days, for the week. And that's a good look at that.

Let's follow up with another video after this, but thanks for watching.