PalMate’s Latest Feature: Trailer Tracking

by Jamie Doyle, posted 6 months, 1 week, 1 day, 18 hours ago

I’ve been in the pallet industry a long time and worked for a few large pallet companies along the way. One thing that was always an issue at every pallet company I ever worked for was tracking the company’s trailers. I have seen everything from marker boards, to magnet boards, to spreadsheets all being used for the same purpose with varying results….to track trailers.

Shipping is one of the most important aspects of any pallet company. Having your shipping efforts hampered because you can’t locate trailers is something that should never happen. Yet, it is something that has happened to all of us at one time or another. This is particularly a problem in the recycled pallet industry where trailers are dropped at multiple customers on a daily basis. I managed one pallet company that had over 250 trailers and it was a constant struggle to keep up with them. This resulted in too much time and energy being spent looking after equipment instead of using it to focus on increasing quality, productivity, and efficiency.

With version 1.6 of PalMate ERP, we intend to stop our customers from wasting time and energy on trailer tracking. The new Trailer Tracking feature allows customers to enter all their trailers into Company Settings once and then select them from dropdown lists from then on within PalMate. This keeps users from accidentally duplicating trailers within the system by giving them slightly different names.  Once the trailer numbers are in, users can start selecting trailers from the dropdown lists when shipping product, picking up product, dropping and hooking at customers locations, etc.. Once trailers are in use in the system users can pull up a printable report that shows every trailer in the system and its location. Users can search by specific trailer or by customer. Even trailers in transit are shown. This report can be left open all day and refreshed as needed or printed. This allows our users to focus on more useful endeavors such as increasing profits.

~Jamie Doyle, Vice President – Automated Machine Systems, Inc.

Trailer Tracking is one of the latest features in version 1.6 of PalMate ERP which will start rolling out to customers towards the middle of November 2011.