Not long ago, a school bus and a refuse collection truck from LeMay Enterprises Inc. in Tacoma, Wash., collided. The school bus driver said the LeMay driver pulled out onto the road right in front of the oncoming bus. “I couldn't avoid hitting the truck,” the bus driver told the local media. Police officers at the scene concurred and assigned blame to the driver of the garbage truck.

The driver, however said that he was on the shoulder of the road backing up to a can, and that the school bus veered off the road and hit him. LeMay Operations Manager Rick Thompson decided to look into the matter using a global positioning system (GPS)-based program manufactured by Routeware in Beaverton, Ore. The program is installed in the roughly 200 trucks in LeMay's fleet.

Thompson printed out the information from the system and drew a map that detailed the truck's location. “I used [the program] to trace the movements of the truck up through the accident,” Thompson says. “I found that the truck was backing up when the accident occurred.” The technology also proved that the truck was on the shoulder and not on the road.

He pulled up the times and GPS latitude and longitude readings as well as the speed of the truck and the direction it was traveling at specific times along the route. He then recorded that information on the map.

Later, he took the information package to the police, presented LeMay's view of the accident and asked them to take another look. “After reviewing the information, the police found that the school bus driver was at fault,” Thompson says. “That saved us a lot of money in legal fees.”

In fact, many waste management firms say they are saving money with GPS-based systems. They are conserving fuel, reducing wear and tear on roll-off trucks and front loaders with more efficient dispatching, and cutting paper and ink expenses, which are saved by paperless routing.

Waste firms also are generating higher revenues by using GPS to retain existing customers and to convert delinquent accounts into profitable ones. Finally, companies are integrating GPS tracking systems with their accounting systems to accelerate billing and reporting processes.

Big Savings

LeMay runs more than 250 trucks across a rural area of Washington state, with about 80 percent of the fleet handling residential work. The fleet is “live” on its GPS system, meaning that a cellular network enables the dispatcher to send and receive data from trucks on their routes, wherever the trucks might be. Likewise, the drivers can communicate with dispatch as they finish pick-ups, sending all relevant information about what was picked up and missed, and why.

Also, if a truck breaks down, a helper truck sent to finish the route does not have to return to the office for a route sheet. Instead, a dispatcher simply sends the data to the helper's onboard computer.

By using the GPS-based system and accompanying onboard computers, roll-offs can be dispatched out on the road, not by a voice call to a cell phone, but with text that identifies the customer, provides the most efficient directions from the driver's current location, and even displays a map showing the recommended route. “We've had this system working on our roll-off trucks for nine months,” Thompson says. “And it saves us a lot of time, which means that our drivers can haul one and sometimes two extra boxes per day.”

The onboard computer has a red and green button that the driver uses to record what happens at a stop. The process is the same for residential, commercial, roll-off and other services. When a driver makes a pick-up, he or she hits a green button. When the driver misses a pick-up, he or she hits a red button, and then follows a menu to file an explanation, such as a car was blocking the container or the container wasn't out.

This information is instantly transmitted over the cellular network to the dispatcher's computer. Thus, when a customer calls to complain about a missed pick-up, the dispatcher knows what happened and can suggest a plan to remedy the situation.

Over a couple of years, the GPS-based system will save thousands of dollars in paper, ink and printer costs, according to Thompson. “We assign our drivers five-day routes,” he says. “So multiply five days by 80 drivers. That comes to 400 route sheets to print every week. Each five-day route sheet has an average of 150 pages. That is 60,000 pages per week in paper, ink and printer wear-and-tear costs that [the system] eliminates.”

Retaining Good Customers

Steve Reed, vice president and chief operating officer of Granger Waste Services in Lansing, Mich., aims to satisfy 90,000 residential customers, 7,000 commercial clients and several thousand roll-off customers. The company also maintains recycling and composting facilities. Granger, too, has installed a GPS tracking system.

“The system gives customer service people real-time information about what is going on in the field,” Reed says. “If a commercial customer calls and says that we missed a pick-up, we can check right away. If the pick-up has been made, and someone filled the dumpster again, we'll certainly go back and pick up a second load.”