Hi. New member here. I have a Rural mail delivery and was wondering how to keep track of what I'm doing, eg I may have mail, parcels, milk or papers to deliver at a customers box. The big variation each day is parcels, I use a card at present to say who for, how many and large or small. I was thinking of a touch screen and gps linked to a database of mail box's to show what I have to deliver, the database to scroll? this is more for when I use relief drivers, I have yet to buy anything. In the program I would like to be able to select the customer and add comments (parcels) quickly, and be able to handle up to 1000 customers.
Is this too hard?

If I need software written who could write it?

For the pc I was thinking of the Fujitsu LifeBook T4010 Tablet notebook, yes it's used but to try this out it will do.

Any advise will help
Thanks

Hi plmnth, and welcome to the forums. If you just need route optimization software, then Microsoft Streets and Trips will likely satisfy most of your needs. Download the free trial version, and try to work with it for a while.

Thanks for the reply. What I see as happening each day. The list of customers will remain the same, so will their address, so what I hope to happen is as I arrive at each address the customers name, and details, eg papers, milk, if they are a farmer or dairy farmer and most important do they get parcels, how many and what size, will show, I'm not so interested in the route.

The parcels must be able to be entered very fast and easy onto the data base.

I will now go and buy a PC and GPS aerial to try Streets and Trips, hope it works in the country.

You could keep your database for example in Excel, and each day you could import updated database into Streets & Trips. The required customer information could be then displayed as a pushpin info balloon on the map.

thanks I will give it a try after getting laptop

I am a rural carrier and wonder why you are delivering milk?? In any event, you will find it much easier to just use parcel markers, I used to use the bright orange envelopes that the rural carriers use for stamp purchase...as you are putting your parcels in delivery sequence, stick a brightly colored marked in front of the persons mail, when you pull down, the marker will be in the front of their mail..When you are on the street, when you come to a marker, you will know that person has a parcel. I cannot imagine that you could imput all the information every day for parcels into a gps system...sometimes, the old ways work best...best of luck..RR 1 in South Dakota.