We recently interviewed Milo Mell, technical support manager at LT Enterprises [a North Dakota-based transporter of crude oil] for an upcoming article in Field Technologies magazine. While talking with Mell, we asked his thoughts on the following question and thought you may find his response interesting:

How did your mobile workers respond to the idea of deploying a fleet management solution? Did you run into any challenges, and if so, how did you handle them?

Well, there was a lot of skepticism involved, especially with some of the older drivers that we have in our fleet. Not being familiar with smartphones, many of them scoffed and said, ‘This awful, this is terrible, I’d rather write out the ticket like I always have.’ The younger drivers were a little bit skeptical, but they knew how to use the phones.

The older drivers got used to it. Some of them complained about the buttons being too small, so I got a stylus for every driver to use, so they can tap on the keys easier.

There was a little bit of concern about the location tracking. The field is growing and moving so fast, it’s hard for the map companies to keep up with the new roads. Every month there are new lease roads created for new wells that aren’t mapped yet. It’s gotten better. The companies are pretty good about getting us GPS coordinates, and by having those the drivers have been able to get to the locations with less difficulty.

This Q&A was previously published on Field Technologies Online, and is reposted here with permission.

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