Hi, we are a transport company based in Mijas,Spain. We have a small fleet of trucks that cover the whole of europe. We are looking for a cheaper solution to contact our trucks than mobile phones as the costs are very high.Does anyboby have any ideas that may help us ■■ Thanks in advance guys.
Supply your drivers with a 3G phone and enable only Data transmission, so you can send an E-mail with all the details and they can send you any questions back.
Great solution and a much more quiet office, of course you can go for tracing and tracking solutions like Groeneveld or Punch Telematix, but investment is substantial.
A good telephone sullier would be able to block internet and other E-mail addresses on the 3G phone but leave other options as Sat nav etc working, phones like Blackberry bold communicate without a problem also if they have only GPRS or Edge connection.
If you supply them with a phone with a big enough screen than they would be able to read your message without any problems.
We communicate already for the last 10 year as little by phone as possible, it works, makes the office less hectic, because you can react when you need or want to, but a phone you have to answer if you like it or not.
Every phone call cost at least 5 minutes for a driver who phones 4x as day it’s 20 minutes, for an office who has 20 vehicles on the road it’s 400 minutes (6hr 40 minutes) a day, and than you need to try to do some work as well.
we’re based in malaga and all our phones are orange so whilst in spain all calls are free and in europe its only 9.5c per minute with no extra connection charge. don’t know if that helps but how many trucks have you got? the type of thing caladonian dream does is for a big fleet but if you’ve got only a couple the outlay would be greater than the savings
Just communicate via text message. Cheap and easy. That what company I work for does and we have quite a sizable fleet. One thing I like about communicating this way is everything is there in black and white, any mistakes it’s easy to see where it originated, whereas with phone everybody can deny everything!
switchlogic:
Just communicate via text message. Cheap and easy. That what company I work for does and we have quite a sizable fleet. One thing I like about communicating this way is everything is there in black and white, any mistakes it’s easy to see where it originated, whereas with phone everybody can deny everything!
Your totaly right to the point there Luke, no issues with things lost in communication, no wrong understanding of postcodes, addresses etc. and if there is a mistake you can see where it comes from.
Years ago we had a driver standing in Munich (pronounce in dutch as Munchen) that he couldn’t find Gladbach, we only had send him to Monchengladbach, but the way the planner had pronounced it it sounded like Munchen - Gladbach. 
With proper E-mail, SMS or other you can avoid a lot of this trouble.
Hi and thanks for your replies, the problem we have is that when we leave spain we have to switch off the data roaming on the mobile phone as the costs are high,this leaves us with no 3G so internet is not an option.We are with orange at the moment but find that the guys abuse the phone mainly for incoming calls as there is no way of regulating it.Also the drivers spend alot of time talking with each other and the costs for this has risen greatly. At the moment the phones have been blocked to only recieve calls from 2 of us in the office, this is not the solution as communication is important for clients and also for the drivers to call each other when neccesary.We dont mind an initial outlay or even monthly running costs to find the right solution. so if anybody can advise of any reliable solutions we would appreciate it.At the moment we have a very modern fleet so we could look at things with built in tracker systems or sat nav,reliabilty is the most important as we cover the whole of europe.Thanks again.
what you mean then steve is your drivers are costing you a fortune 
we have open phones and if we go over an agreed limit we pay the difference, maybe if you suggested that to your drivers they would think again about the costs involved.
as luke says text is the cheapest and easiest way, all my work gets sent by text no worries over postcodes then, by the look of your pic do you do furniture? if so postcodes are important more so than conversations.
if you can’t get the drivers to lower their usage then change the drivers i know a few good ones very near you
If their are no phone calls then emails are only going to cost buttons. Also blackberry messenger is free worldwide. Sat nav enabled on a data plan will cost a fortune. As has been said though, if its your drivers costing you a fortune then get rid. I have an open phone and have been told not to abuse it, I have not used it yet and only will do in an emergency.
Blackberry messenger is what the last 2 companies I worked for use, I only drive a van round europe and the bkackberry is easy enough to use.
I’m not 100% sure but going on what i been told by a number of phone retailers in the UK apart from the monthly service charge Blackberry Messenger is free even when your in different countries.
First find the best tarriff, vodafone espana have some good deals at the minute, then tell your drivers that any non business calls will be deducted from their net wages.
i pay an extra £10 per month with orange. this gives me free incoming calls throughout europe.
so if i need to contact anyone, i simply ring out and let it ring 3 times, then hang up. they ring me back, and it costs no more.
o2 do a similar deal.
the cab phone is restricted to certain outgoing numbers.