Taxi Driver Online

Bidding works well if it's set up correctly and if the system is left to run on auto despatch, your drivers must get the correct instruction too. The crucial thing with bidding is you must get your bidding tables set up correctly, to do this you will need a minimum of two separate bidding tables, one for when the traffic is busy and another for when traffic is quiet IE one for day's and another for nights. Depending on the size of your pulling zones, set the day shift bidding to pull from maybe 2 or 3 surrounding zones including the jobs primary zone and for nights we use approx 10 pulling zones, this all depends on how far your drivers want to be pulled for a job, 10 of our pulling zones is normally less than 2 or 3 miles.

I think the biggest problem with the mobile data signals is that they are very crap, and very unreliable. So maybe that's why Nigel's firm has lost work.

No amount of time and effort setting up will help if the signal is poor.

_________________
IDFIMH

Bang on the money there Sussex, I was trying to say that but I like to go round the houses before I get to the front doors.

I'm not a massive fan of any data system, the ones I've seen working are ok and do a job but if you've got a good base op they'll outshine any data system hands down.

Mobile data in any area is a sack of brown stuff if the coverage is crap, round our way we are supposed to have a good network coverage on all networks but several times a day you have to take the battery out of the PDA because it won't connect you, you'll get the red connecting sign there, taking the battery out is the only way to get it up and running again so if your on the motorway your shafted.

Nigel, what mercury pda's are you using?

_________________
Life? Don't talk to me about life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm2eslm6hI

I misunderstood you then.....Sorry!

Course the signal affect the performance but that’s down to the boss making the right decision of what’s right for the business. If the vast majority of work lies within a relatively small area, a PMR system generally works out the best and if the radio signal’s no good the get a better radio system. If there’s insurmountable problems radio wise or a high percentage of the work is longer distances then a PDA solution will probably be better and unless you work in the back of beyond, the network coverage these days shouldn’t give any problems. Again if it does change your network!

Taxi boss seems to have summed things up pretty well. Any system has to be set up for the individual company’s needs but nine times out of ten, we find systems still have the basic default settings years after the original install. This is incredibly frustrating given the time and effort we put into making the system flexible and the owner can’t be bothered spending an hour or two to get the benefits.

As for bidding, I can’t understand why anyone would turn bidding off. Pull a car too far and the driver complains but if the same driver bids, he can’t complain because it’s entirely his choice. The only exception would be small companies in the early hours and then it makes sense to just hit the work out in turn.

Surprisingly, the fastest finger method’s still used a lot but it’s basically an unfair system that inevitably gives less than perfect results. The timed window method is better where bids are gathered over say 10 seconds then a decision is made for which car is the nearest, (exactly what an operator would do). This eliminates the bidding scrabble but the downside is drivers don’t like waiting 10 seconds only to find another car was nearer.

We leave each bidding window open for 30 seconds which we consulted our drivers about, fastest finger simply isn't fair.

Mine is a HTC. We've had several but they are all the same when it comes connection, you can here the radio op saying to other drivers, "you'll have to take your battery out and put it back in again".

We've tried O2 they were a sack of crap, we are now on Orange who are equally as crap.

Nigel

Don’t know what to say about that then but I seriously doubt the network coverage in your area is worse than any other area ie your not in what I call the back of beyond.

We use all sorts of PDA’s and other than some GPS issues on older models we don’t see any great problems. A few years ago I was telling people to steer clear of the technology because it was too expensive and didn’t work very well but these days it’s a perfectly good alternative.

Bill

I doubt it's the network Bill it's got something to do with the system, have you heard of having to take the back off and remove the battery from the PDA and reboot it again so you can get a signal? Try doing it on a motorway when your doing 70, I'll have the whole of Nottinghamshire's finest waiting to give me a ticket for using a mobile device while driving

I’ve just checked coverage for your area and it certainly looks like you shouldn’t have network problems. So Nigel it’s back to what I said earlier in that maybe the systems not been configured correctly but either way, your manager needs to be asking questions to get that sorted while he still has a business.

Little more I can say.

Bill

That's not network trouble that's your PDA cradle playing up or GPS unit, to have to reboot either means the programme has frozen in the office or in your car, either way i have used your system and i do agree it's a pile of ******

Nigel

You have to keep the battery topped up too as if it gets below a cetain level the PDA starts shutting down bits to save battery power. If you have the pda with an external GPS ariel that will go first.

Change your network to M2MData2 it's more stable and ask for upgrades to the HTC Pharos they have internal GPS and don't crash unless the battery is getting low

If auto dispatch is off and bidding is off you'll have to get both put on it's just a click on the mouse

_________________
Life? Don't talk to me about life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm2eslm6hI

It's on charge all the time when in the car, as for the network we are on the M2MData2. it shows you that when you are trying to connect to the system.