Taxi Driver Online

The talk of schedulers and optimisers is excellent sales talk InTheKnow but.......

If the programme can't decide which is the closest car then how good are all its other sums? Surely the optimum optimiser would give each job to the closest car when required.

As for my zones, well I don't want 100+ zones and out of town zones need to be quite large IMHO. And we do a lot of out of town work.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Anyway. Evocab is clearly working well for some big fleets.

In Swindon, Portsmouth, Chesterfield and Basildon they speak highly of it.

It will be interesting to see Cgull's ongoing satisfaction levels.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

And do we really think that any of these big fleet owners are going to admit to buying a six figure pup?

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IDFIMH

Maybe some form of 'closest car' would be good, until you get the driver that has a day of crud jobs, because he gets stuck close to sainsburys, and just does short runs from sainsburys to the surrounding area all day......

at least closest zone gives the driver a bit of variety, and the scheduler/optimiser process will ditribute the work fairer.

Can't speak for Cgull, but surely any system must be set up with help and advice from the suppliers.

Blaming those that set it up i.e. simple taxi folk, is a little bit rich methinks.

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IDFIMH

Sussex - maybe you are right - [i]some[/i] evocab firms may not admit to buying £000000's worth of rubbish - but at the same time, [i]some[/i] of the firms you mention would not be afraid to make sure the whole industry knew what an expensive doorstop auriga sold them. [/i]

Sussex - if it came across as blaming the taxi folk - i apologise

Of course the supplier must be involved with helping, and I am sure they were. With a system as different as Evocab is when compared to Sirius, some times it can be difficult to remember everything.

Maybe it takes more from both sides to make it right first time - the supplier to ensure the customer has understood, but also for the customer to admit when they are not 100% sure.

Hope this clears up my, erm, faux-pas

and the rigmaroll if you get a no show.
takes about 5 minutes to go through all the stages to get put back on.
also i had a job with a 20 min lead time when i was in the same zone.
would have took me one min to get tyhere.
then they lost the job.
drivers have been taking fuses out of sat and working how they like.
a lot of money for not A lot progress.

Cgull - let me go through your points one by one:

1. The rigmaroll if you get a no show. Takes about 5 minutes to go through all the stages to get put back on. - This is a configuration option which can be different for everyone. The configuration checks the time the job was booked for against the time the driver does a no show. It sounds like the timer is see to 5 minutes - something your firm would have decided upon. This is not designed to annoy you, but to stop the people who choose to do a no show as soon as they get the job. If you try to mark the job as a no job too early, you should get a message - check the time the job is for and then try again after the 5 minutes, and it should be fine.

2. Had a job with a 20 min lead time when i was in the same zone. Would have took me one min to get there. - Lead times on zones are based upon how long it would 'normally' take for the job to be covered. It could have been that for the previous 5 days, it did take 20 minutes to find a car and get the car to the pickup. If you think 20 minutes is too long, again, speak to the office - it is configured by them and can be changed.

3. Drivers have been taking fuses out of sat and working how they like. - Take care about doing this. This can be tracked by the office. There is a configuration in the system that, if switched on, will not accept plots from vehicles that have no GPS.

Hope this helps

Sounds more like a design fault. If you want to stop drivers reporting No Show when they are not at pickup, you should check their distance from the postion using your GPS not using a fixed time such as 5 min from pickup time. What do you do when the job is for ASAP i.e. pickup is "now"?




Why previous 5 days. Everyday is different in Taxi companies. Friday and Saturday nights might take longer. Mid-week might take shorther.
Does it do this because it is Intelligent !! or may be I have misunderstood the whole thing.

Don - It does also check the distance of the vehicle from the pickup point. Won't work however if people unplug their GPS, hence the reason for the double check. In the instance of an asap job, the check is still the pickup time + 5 minutes (for example), which is not much use, but also distance from pickup.

As well as having the 'default' lead time on a zone (i.e. the 20 minutes), the evocab system features variable delay times for different times of the day and different days of the week,

Again, this issue should be discussed with the office every time the situation occurs. Remember - they are office based - drivers will always be best placed to decide on what the delay time on a zone should be and how it should differ at different times of the day and different days of the week.

reminds me that all the time jobs are being despatched twice.
its alright if the driver accepts it twice.
but many times they just let it dump them the second time and another car is sent.
gets a no show and then waits all day to be put back on.

i know that.
you know that.
but the offivce havent a clue.

we get that, the general rule is that if you get sent the same job twice, then your in an area with dodgey radio receiption, press the acknowleged button to let the system know you have received the job, or you can bet that it gets sent out to a second car. nothing worse than being the second car to turn up at a one fare pick up

Cgull

In setting up our new system it has been crucial that I don't only sit in the office and ponder how I think it should work. I also get out on the road and experience it.

Everytime I have been on road in last ten days I get back to the office and tinker a bit with zones, lead times, XDA set up etc.

Is someone doing that in your office?

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