Benefits of busHive Go Beyond Trip Management for New Jersey Contractor

In addition to boosting efficiency for field and athletic trips, B.R. Williams Inc. finds that busHive streamlines everything from billing to vehicle management to tracking driver records.

Off-site student trips are a team effort. Strong communication and coordination are a must for the transportation provider, the school staff, and the bus drivers.

School staff, including teachers, coaches, and administrative assistants, need a user-friendly and efficient way to request trips and provide details on what they need.

At the school bus company or the district transportation office, dispatchers and other staff members have to manage high volumes of trips and track key information like costs and driver hours.

And school bus drivers need clear instructions on who they are transporting, the schedule of the trip, and how to get where they need to go.

Fortunately, all of these teams’ needs can be met in a unifying solution. Trip software can help school bus contractors and transportation departments overcome the hurdles of field trip management, but first they have to find the right fit.

For B.R. Williams Inc. in Woodstown, New Jersey, off-site trips are an important revenue source and an opportunity to deliver stellar service for their school district partners. To help handle its big workload of trips, the contractor turned to busHive’s powerful and user-friendly software.

In the process, B.R. Williams discovered that busHive could help with much more than trip management.

PROBLEM: Paper Records and Meager Features

B.R. Williams Inc. has been transporting students for generations, initially for one school in rural Alloway Township, New Jersey, growing to currently serving 12 school districts in three counties in southern New Jersey.

Meanwhile, three generations of the Williams family have held the reins of the school bus business. Today, Vice President Chloe Williams runs the company.

With a fleet of 130 school buses, B.R. Williams transports nearly 4,000 students in daily route service. In a normal year, the contractor also charters about 2,500 to 2,800 field and athletic trips. B.R. Williams also takes on some non-school business, such as transporting veterans and other passengers to appointments.

With that busy schedule of trips, the contractor had been bogged down by its previous trip management systems. First it was a small physical scheduling book, which eventually “grew to big books,” as Chloe Williams recalls.

Then the contractor transitioned to a computer system for trip management, which stored information but lacked dispatch capability and was riddled with “many, many issues,” Chloe says. For example, the system didn’t have the ability to cross-check itself for double-booking of drivers.

“We still basically dispatched from notes and pieces of paper,” Chloe says. “We were using multiple systems, including pen and paper, to try to make all aspects of our company work together.”

To tie those pieces together and boost efficiency and reliability, B.R. Williams sought a more comprehensive and robust solution for trip management.

SOLUTION: Powerful Tools and Comprehensive Coverage

In searching for a new solution for trip management, the top factors for B.R. Williams were flexibility, ease of use, and referrals from other school bus operators. After getting a referral and witnessing a demonstration, they found what they were looking for with busHive.

As the team at B.R. Williams discovered, the busHive platform is highly customizable and boasts a full suite of features, including:

• Ability to manage daily route & trip scheduling
• Automated time mileage calculations for quoting
• Color-coordinated driver & vehicle availability
• Customizable vehicle maintenance schedules
• Ability to track Federal, State and company driver requirements
• Invoicing and payroll management
  
  

Fleet management is another facet of busHive that was appealing to B.R. Williams. Chloe says that her fleet manager embraced busHive early on and began using it for work orders and tracking vehicle maintenance history.

Whether for trips, fleet management, billing, or other functions, B.R. Williams saw busHive as a powerful tool to help them deliver great service, save time, and, as Chloe puts it, “probably save a lot of trees” by reducing paperwork.

In addition to boosting efficiency for B.R. Williams, busHive can make trip requests and approvals easier for school staff. Several schools that B.R. Williams serves were trained to use busHive. Their process works like this: A teacher or other staff member can enter a trip request in busHive, which is then sent to the principal for approval. Then the request is sent to the superintendent or school board for the final sign-off on the district’s end.

“Once the district has all the approvals in place, they hit a button [in busHive], and it pushes it to us,” Chloe says. She notes that while learning and implementing a new program is a major undertaking, “Once you’ve got busHive set up and people trained, it really is a great tool.”

Fast Facts: B.R. Williams Inc.

• School buses: 130
• Drivers: 150
• School districts served: 12
• Students transported daily: 3,920
• Trips per year: 2,500 to 2,800

BENEFITS: Accurate Tracking, Data Insights, and Strong Support

For a contractor like B.R. Williams, one of the key advantages of busHive is the help it provides in quoting and billing for trips.

“It’s been great, because you’ve got a good solid record to go back to,” Chloe Williams says. “It will cost the trip out for you with your wages and fuel, so you’ve got accuracy.”

B.R. Williams has even used busHive’s tracking tools to save schools money by adjusting trip schedules. When bus drivers finish a trip, they complete a trip form, where they record details like departure and arrival times. Those forms are given to a B.R. Williams office staff member, who enters them into busHive. On reviewing the data in busHive, the contractor might find that drivers are sitting at the school for too long before the actual departure time.

“busHive helps in educating schools, and it gives us more data to work with,” Chloe says, giving an example: “‘Look, we’re sitting at schools. We can save you 15 minutes on every trip if you just tell us to be here at 3 o’clock [instead of 2:45].'”

Meanwhile, busHive has streamlined the billing process for trips. The program interfaces with QuickBooks, which B.R. Williams uses for billing, although they can also send bills directly from busHive. Either way, emailing bills directly to schools’ offices is a snap.

“It has definitely saved time for our accounts receivable people,” Chloe says.

Driver management has also been easier with busHive. B.R. Williams uses the program to email drivers trip assignments and to track driver records like physicals, fingerprinting, licensing information, and infractions.

“The personnel side of busHive is very good,” Chloe says.

While B.R. Williams uses a separate system for payroll, busHive has helped the company pay drivers for taking on trips. An office staff member enters drivers’ hours for each trip in busHive. Then they can pull a report of drivers’ trip hours from busHive and upload it to their payroll system, where those extra hours are added to their regular route hours. Chloe says that this process has saved time, and she’s hoping to do more integration with busHive and payroll next school year.

In addition to field and athletics trips, B.R. Williams uses busHive for managing daily school bus routes, which is helpful on a number of levels, including customer service. For example, parents often call with questions about their kids’ routes — even such basic details as which bus they ride and when they’re picked up or dropped off. With busHive, office staff can quickly and easily look up passenger information to answer parents’ inquiries.

“Whoever is in the office can take that phone call from a parent or school: ‘Can you tell me what time so and so gets picked up?'” Chloe explains. “If we’ve got the student’s name, we can pull up what bus they ride, what school they go to, and their pickup and drop-off times.”

Beyond the software itself, B.R. Williams has appreciated the high level of customer service that busHive provides. That has included consistent support people who answer the phone and respond quickly to emails.

“They are extremely helpful,” Chloe says. “They want to do anything and everything they can to make it work for the contractor.”

About busHive

busHive develops user-friendly software platforms for tracking virtually all aspects of transportation. The company offers solutions for both school districts and school bus contractors, including trip management, driver compliance, and vehicle maintenance planning. Learn more at www.bushive.com.