UPS Shaves Costs With DIAD III Radio

United Parcel Service has established a land-based radio system that provides customers real-time tracking information in a way that cuts the package carrier’s cellular network costs.

UPS worked with Motorola Corp. to develop and deploy the system, known as DIAD III, at a cost of $100 million. It is being used in 13 metropolitan areas, the carrier said.

In the past, a driver would collect information on a hand-held computer pad. The driver would return to the delivery truck and plug into a cellular telephone adapter to transmit data or to get further instructions from the dispatcher, said Dudley Land, vice president of information services at UPS.

With the new hand-held computers, a driver is able to scan the package bar code, collect the receiver’s signature, type the last name of the receiver and transmit the data from the delivery point. Before the driver leaves the delivery point, tracking information is available to customers, he said.

In addition to reducing the time for data to get into the system, the network cuts transmission time to three-tenths of a second, compared with 10 seconds for the former cellular network. This results in cost savings from reduced time on a cellular network, Land noted.

He said the primary reason for the investment was to stay ahead of the competition in the parcel delivery field and to demonstrate “to our customers good reasons to remain loyal.”

“Real-time package tracking is the single most important information service we offer to our customers, accounting for 800,000 requests daily on the World Wide Web alone,” Land said.

UPS is using the system in Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Miami; Minneapolis; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Sarasota, Fla.; Fullerton Calif.; and Woodbridge, N.J.

The company plans to deploy 50,000 of the devices throughout the world over the next two years, Land said.