Wilson Oil of Wallingford, PA is a small heating oil, air-conditioning and heating company with a powerful technology partnership that's warming up its potential for future growth, efficiency, and profitability.  UPS Logistics Technologies, in collaboration with Cargas Systems, has helped Wilson Oil's fuel delivery department achieve a virtually paperless mapping, routing, tracking, and billing system with efficiency that's keeping their customers comfortable all year round.

Known for their superior local service, Wilson Oil had the foresight to understand how applying the right technology could deliver their oil faster and more efficiently—and improve business processes for the company as well.

They started by looking at technology solutions to replace their traditional manual methods of routing their delivery trucks. Wilson Oil, like many small heating oil companies, had been printing out tickets, bursting them, filing them according to zone and urgency, and letting the drivers sequence their stop tickets themselves first thing in the morning of each work day. On busy days in the coldest part of the winter, the entire process could take three hours or more.

Wilson Oil reached out to Cargas, Pennsylvania’s largest provider of Microsoft^® Dynamics, with a 19-year track record of successfully streamlining business processes in a number of industries, including distribution.

Meanwhile, Cargas had been researching available software to improve Wilson Oil’s distribution systems. Soon after Saul Cohen joined Cargas in 2005 as Manager of the Energy division within the Enterprise Resource Planning practice, Cargas became a referral partner for UPS Logistics Technologies.

“Research showed me what UPS Logistics Technologies was doing, and I was impressed with their design and their performance, as well as how they operate as a company,” Cohen says. “UPS Logistics Technologies products are easy to use, and incredibly functional. What takes other programs a half hour takes Roadnet^® a half minute.”

Wilson Oil President David O’Connell was eager for a customized framework that was a good fit for Wilson. He says, “We wanted software that was user-friendly, scalable, and most of all, seamless, with close integration between delivery, truck level, routing, mapping, tracking, all the way to billing.”

Together, UPS Logistics Technologies and Cargas came up with a solution that’s proving to be a perfect fit for Wilson today, with room for growth in the years to come. The UPS Logistics Technologies portion includes Roadnet, which has eliminated the ticket pull, printing, bursting, filing, sorting and routing, replacing the handful of tickets with one sheet of step-by-step directions for the entire day’s routes. And with MobileCast^®, the drivers’ routes—and their progress—are visible to Wilson’s dispatcher in real time all day long. Using its customizable Solution Builder as a foundation, Cargas is able to move data between the UPS-LT technologies into a seamless platform. Cargas Energy uses a web-based application for office users, and a mobile application for the fuel delivery drivers. The Cargas Mobile application wirelessly sends and receives delivery info in real-time from a Tablet PC, giving drivers a user-friendly, touch-sensitive, full screen interface with GPS. Built-in connections and interfaces to the trucks’ digital meter registers ensure each truck can accurately capture fuel delivery, real time price changes and prevent over filling—a must for profitable operations. An on-truck billing feature eliminates the time and cost of sending delivery invoices through the mail, and has improved Wilson’s cash flow.

“We’re almost completely paperless now,” O’Connell says. “The Roadnet directions are terrific, and with the MobileCast piece, we can see where the drivers are and whether or not they’re following the prescribed routes. If there’s a need for an emergency delivery, the rest of the routes for the day can be reconfigured around that drop. Plus, with Roadnet Info Center^®, our customer service representatives have everything at their fingertips when a customer calls. We can now give them a very accurate time window of when their delivery will arrive. At this point, we could double our business without the need for more administrative personnel.”

Cargas and UPS Logistics Technologies consider Wilson Oil a perfect example of how a small company can benefit from big-company technology. Saul Cohen says, “Anyone who’s hesitant to make the investment should consider the value of fewer miles, better productivity, and less wear-and-tear on the vehicles themselves.”

David O’Connell is optimistic about growing his company’s future, and is looking to let his technology team explore potential improvements in Wilson’s service vehicle operations. “With Cargas and UPS Logistics Technologies, we ended up with two very robust product lines that have made us more profitable, improved our cash flow, and our customer service,” he says. “The financial rewards are far reaching.”