Taxi Driver Online

Hi,
I am looking into introducing gps and xdas to my taxi fleet, I like both these systems but cannot decide which to go with.

Has anyone got experience of both systems that could give me a helping hand with some advice.

Thank you very much

Sorry no, I must be living in the past or in my own world, most of this tech stuff on here after years of doing the job is beyond belief and never heard of it, takes me all the time to fiddle about with the car music radio, then at times struggle, not got the hang of using a video recorder as yet

I still struggle with the meter at times

HI
How many cars do you have for starters? What sort of area do you cover? Do you want to use radio or GPRS?

regards
RadioMan

Hi Radio Man,

I have 50 cars, I want to use gprs for the extra coverage it gives you as our radios cut out at about 15 miles radius and I am in the colchester and surrounding areas.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Hi
Ok you will hear all the sales pitch from the GPRS boys about how its the best thing since sliced bread. Its good but like anything its not 100% no matter what anyone says. NO DATA system is 100%.

If you want to increase your coverage area then you should look at the various costs of a radio dispatch system compared to a gprs dispatch system.

Maybe even look at moving your radio to a remote site to increase your radio coverage, this will give you good coverage at a fixed rate.

These costs included the fixed costs and the on going costs like phone calls to/from the vehicle etc.

I would suggest that if your going down the line of GPRS that it might be worth while to keep your radios in the cars so that you can still have voice contact in the local area (espeically if your running from your office and no additional costs).

What you will have to do is find out companies that have both GPRS and Radio Dispatch systems. Visit them and ask about the hidden costs which they had had with the system.

If you talk to the people and want some feedback then let me know

regards
RadioMan

Some info at www.thinkfleet.com. Designed by the same guys who developed Computer Cab's current Data Terminal and Xeta XDA system. ThinkFleet is running at Blueback (and some exec car companies) and can work with any booking and dispatch system, including CabMaster (Windows) and Cantech XDS.

Good luck with the search!

M

I work for a company in london with 50 cars on the road and we use marandy. I have found the system very stable and easy to use. The biggest problem is the data heads, they arn't driver proof!!! We have the new style data heads and the problem with these is that the wires from the radio to the data head can't be un-plugged, so drivers can't remove them when they go home. Being in London drivers need to take out data heads when they go home or the druggies smash the windows and nick them thinking they are tom tom's. What we do now is any driver who breaks his data head(I decide if it's thier fault)we charge them £100, and guess what? they have stopped breaking them!!!. The only problem with marandy is they are a small company so if you do get problems they can be hard to get hold off, but having said that I have only called them out twice in 2 years(and 1 of them was a radio fault not data). Having been a controller with pen and paper, I will never go back to voice. Hope this helps.

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stressed controller!!!

If you want the support then Cordic is the one, I do hear tell their customer service is second to none.

When changing from voice to data you need to have someone who can hold your hand through the transition and explain things to you in a language you can understand, not too much techie speak, my feedback tells me Cordic does this.

I have looked at Mirandy and know people who have it and feed back here has been very poor.

Hope that helps

Eric

I run Cordic and it is the dogs b0ll0cks for us.

We sound similar size.

Radioman as his name suggests is exceedingly pro radio. We did take the same action of leaving radios in cars, but find drivers are using them very rarely and often forget to turn them on.

GPRS has been outstandingly reliable.

Cordic bring costings to the table that make remote base stations etc simply non-viable.

Someone else mentioned dataheads. Cordic give you a choice of hand held computers. They also offer excellent bracket systems which mean solid mountings without any drilling of holes.

Talk to them or PM me if you want to hear/see more.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Whatever you do, DO NOT get hand held computer's for the drivers, I worked at a company that had them and the driver's kept losing/dropping them. At £500 a pop they are not cheap to replace.

DRiver's would leave rather than pay for a replacement.

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stressed controller!!!

We have had XDA's for 6 months and haven't lost one.

Had one screen broken and about 3 others sent back with other faults.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Tom thumb, that's good going, XDA'S are good, if the drivers are out of thier car's at least you can still get hold of them, and because they work via the internet they work anywhere, but that can be a problem, internet goe's down, XDA'S stop working, unless they have changed the system?

Let me know please.

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stressed controller!!!

Rambo

The Cordic system has backstops that so far prove effective.

About two weeks ago o2's gprs network seemed to fail, our system dropped back to using GSM over the phone network. Was frustratingly slow for an hour or two, but jobs got through and we kept going.

Admittedly when we had Auriga bricks they never went wrong (very rarely anyway), but they were stuck in the car. Now I can have a [edited by admin] and not miss a job (have to careful how you handle XDA at the time though).

Our BT landline to our remote aerial was far more unreliable.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Take a refundable deposit off them £25 per week until you get to £400 - focusses the mind like nothing else.

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"Where to, Guv'?. Na sorry not going my way"

If you use XDA's you must get a deposit from the driver.

I must admit I like them, you can still send the job if the driver's getting a tea/going to the loo etc.

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stressed controller!!!