“Today’s customer wants to view the entire freight movement process from start to finish and know where their freight is at all times. Cheetah does that for us—as soon as the driver picks up or delivers freight, he keys that information into the Nextel® phone so it is available to us in real time.” Steve Smith, Watkins’ VP of Performance Standards

Components of the Cheetah System

Cheetah Freight consists of five integrated components that manage pickup and delivery operations:

Cheetah Service Desk: Provides CSR's with an order entry, shipment tracking and driver messaging interface. CSR's can efficiently schedule pickups, and query ETA's, POD's and service exceptions. Cancellations and rescheduled stops take CSR's a few seconds without dispatcher involvement.

Cheetah Route Editor: Geared specifically for dispatchers, the Cheetah Route Editor graphically displays the real time position of every vehicle in the fleet, as well as every currently routed pickup or delivery stop. Dispatchers can make changes in seconds or view a series of possible options and their impact on mileage and driver time. Once the optimum route is determined, the data is automatically relayed to the driver's phone or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Cheetah Tracking Subsystem: The Cheetah Tracking Subsystem tracks the progress of every route and updates route/stop status in real time. This web-based tracking tool enables dispatchers to adjust routes in a few clicks. ETA's are automatically adjusted, and a continual feed of GPS data from all drivers is displayed on the dispatch screen.

Cheetah Routing Engine: The Cheetah Routing Engine works for either advance batch scheduling or dynamic on-demand routing. It also includes the capacity to manage trapped trailers, spotted trailers and drop yards. It operates on over 200 parameters when building routes. These include driver location, street networks, driver schedules, equipment types and vehicle capacity.

Cheetah Exception Monitor: Every pickup and delivery is continuously monitored to locate potential service failures. One dispatcher can manage exceptions while the system automates the remainder of the stops.

E-commerce options to slash the cost of superior customer service

Cheetah Freight comes with two E-Commerce features that put any business on a par with the sophistication of FedEx^® or UPS^®.

Cheetah Web-based Customer Tracking: Customers can view real-time shipment status over the web simply by visiting your website. Instead of calling into your 1-800 number for updates, they can track the progress of their packages from start to finish by logging on to your site.

Cheetah Email Notification Subsystem: The Cheetah Email Notification Subsystem automatically notifies customers of the status of their appointments. Customizable email messages are relayed to customers indicating such facts as pickup/delivery completion or revised ETA's. This can even include the status of each line item on the order.

No additional computer hardware required for most companies

Cheetah offers an Internet-based ASP system that in most cases doesn't require any additional hardware besides a regular Windows PC and a 19" monitor. LTL companies of 25 to 200 (and greater) trucks can easily afford the Cheetah Freight system. The software is hosted on Cheetah's servers and accessed through the Internet with security features to protect your company's data. Contact Cheetah Software for exact pricing on a system that will be specifically tailored for your needs. Full stand-alone systems are also available for companies who desire a complete, self-contained in-house system.

Benefits and features

Rapid implementation — In most cases Cheetah Freight can be fully implemented and up and running in three to four weeks, including training. Minimum disruption of business activity means lower costs to implement.

Software upgrades — With Cheetah Freight, all software upgrades are included in the price of your package.

No hiring — With Cheetah's ASP model, internal IT resources are not needed.

Nominal upfront costs

Seasonal flexibility — Add or remove drivers during seasonal fluctuations

Automated Dispatch & Tracking — Cheetah Freight enables dispatchers and customer service representatives to view driver location and pickup and delivery details instantly from their own route tracking screens.

Real-Time Supply Chain Visibility — Customer service representatives enter pickup and delivery requests into the routing system for immediate dispatch assignment. Service Desk provides customers with up-to-the-minute information about their pickups or deliveries. This module also enables customer service representatives to create, send and view all messages exchanged with the drivers.

Automated Wireless Communication — Cheetah provides your drivers with simple, menu driven two-way communications including on-demand GPS-enabled driving directions to the next stop.

Website Integration — Pick up requests can be taken directly from your company's website for automated routing to the drivers. Delivery ETAs and POD information are available online for real-time customer access.

Digital Signature Capture, Proof of Delivery & Bar Code Scanning — Using Pocket-PC based PDA's, the driver can capture signatures electronically at the point of delivery which are transmitted wirelessly in real time and visible on the web in less than a minute. Bar code scanning is utilized to ensure data accuracy and improve driver productivity and performance.

Almost Instant Stripping Manifests — Since pickups are recorded on the driver's GPS-enabled phone or PDA at the time of pickup, Cheetah Freight stripping manifests are printed hours before the truck arrives back at the terminal, saving huge amounts of valuable time.

Real-Time Data Interchange System — Data can be exchanged with Order Entry, Warehouse Management, Accounting and Payroll system in real time using industry standard XML, comma separated, fixed file data formats and even Excel spreadsheets.

Route Planning — Our automated Route Editor with manual overrides, provides a real-time visual display of routes, route history and route costs, planned, edited and actual.

Asset Tracking — Customized tracking of dropped and spotted trailers can be programmed to meet the needs of your business, allowing simplified tracking and dynamic updating of trailer resources.

Pro-Active Customer Service — Potential service failures are automatically identified hours ahead of time and can be addressed before they become customer complaints.

Automated E-mail Notification — Critical and routine customer communications are automated to improve customer satisfaction simultaneously reducing inbound call volume and customer service workload. Automated e-mails notify shippers instantly when packages are signed for, and consignees with their delivery ETAs and PODs.

Minimum hardware requirements for Cheetah Freight

Pentium II computer

128 MB RAM

Windows® NT®/2000/XP

19-inch monitor

High-speed internet connection

Wide range of hardware supported by Cheetah Freight

Cheetah Freight runs on a wide range of mobile devices including cellular phones and handheld devices running Pocket PC^®. We also work with satellite based networks such as Qualcomm^®. Our partners currently include:

Sprint/Nextel^®

AT&T^®

T-Mobile^®

Motorola^®

Intermec^®