Aim Transportation cuts the cord with modern maintenance solution

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Aim Transportation Solutions in 2018 created a software system it called RescuePro to help manage equipment breakdowns. When a driver calls into the company's Road Rescue team, RescuePro documents the process.

The person who takes the call asks the driver for certain information, such as their name, unit number and location of next stop, and any other requirements the customer may have and all that funnels to Road Rescue for a work order and service. 

RescuePro over the past 5 years has become the basis of Aim's entire Road Rescue operation, and over that time the makeup of Aim's customer base changed. Transportation became more culturally diverse, and a new generation of customers gravitated away from picking up the phone to make calls. 

"We used to have stickers on our visors, and you'd flip it down and there'd be an 800 number," recalled Aim Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology John Reed. "That was the old days."

The company is now rolling out a bolt-on feature with Navigator, Aim's mobile app, enabling drivers to communicate with the Road Rescue team through the app via text.

"The younger drivers, they don't want to talk to anybody, or they want to talk as little as possible," said Aim Transportation Solutions Vice President of Software Development Dan Kellgren. "They want to do it all on their phone. It actually opens up a texting conversation automatically. It sends our people a link to our internal portal, and it has a texting interface that we use, and we can have text conversations. So, right at their keyboards on the web through our portal, they're texting out to the driver on their phones. A lot of times they don't even have to talk to the drivers. They can just say, 'Hey, I see you got a blown front left tire.'"