Capital City Limousine

Founded in 1986 and based in Washington, DC, Capital City Limousine supports a fleet of privately owned vehicles that range from luxury stretch limousines and executive sedans to passenger vans and mini buses. The company’s service runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, Capital City Limousine arranges transportation services to its customers nationwide.

Business Challenge

For nearly 20 years, Capital City Limousines has provided outstanding service to business travelers, entertainers, conventioneers, political representatives and tourists visiting Washington, DC. The company prides itself on both its continued professionalism and attention to detail. However, navigating through a busy city can often lead to unexpected delays - disrupting driver punctuality. Although the service provider’s agents are supplied with cellular phones and Nextel radios, this solution requires that fleet drivers be proactive in reporting their traffic issues back to central dispatch, which was often difficult while trying to get to a pickup location as quickly as possible.

AirLink Solution

In an effort to systematize its business, Capital City turned to Sierra Wireless for their AirLink PinPoint wireless modems to provide the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system needed to move tracking responsibilities from driver to vehicle. Combining the rich, location-based intelligence provided by Sierra Wireless' industry leading embedded operating system ALEOS with a high precision GPS receiver, the PinPoint provides a cost-effective and robust platform for countless mobile workforce and asset tracking applications.

By installing PinPoint modems into its vehicles, Capital City taps into AVL features such as dynamic IP address management, advanced power management, discrete inputs, messaging and mileage calculations. “The AirLink modems add an exciting new dimension to our operations,” said Reggie Tymus, president of Capital City. “The audible alert when a driver has entered or left an area, such as Dulles or National, is a terrific help to a busy dispatcher, and the multiple window feature lets us separate and track our fleet by vehicle type, such as: stretch limo, sedan, limo bus, sports utility or vanterra.”

Once satisfied with simply seeing field vehicles as dots on a map, today’s AVL customers are far more sophisticated. Capital City takes advantage of the PinPoint’s graphical interface with customized screen icons, making identification of designated areas, landmarks and individual vehicles easy. “We put zones around our recurring customers, major hotels and frequent stops and are automatically alerted when a vehicle is close to arriving there,” continued Tymus. “We used to have the driver call us when they reached the pickup location; now the limo tells us it has arrived all by itself.”

Results

The PinPoint modem’s AVL features provide Capital City with real-time information on the location of its cars at any given moment. Rather than using the PinPoint as a big brother device to keep tabs on its drivers, Capital City is utilizing AirLink’s pervasive connectivity to enhance its fleet’s performance and customer service. “I was always pretty confident in our drivers being where they said they were, but now I can see it with my own eyes; I’m happy to say my confidence was well-placed,” concluded Tymus.

The Capital City Limousine solution deployment using the AirLink PinPoint modems with advanced AVL features resulted in:

• Enhanced usability – provides easy-to-use graphical interface for busy dispatchers
• Consistently reliable service – allows for vehicle re-routing due to traffic or other disruptions
• Streamlined operations – tracking initiation by central dispatch location instead of individual drivers