BURLINGTON, NJ - Silver Eagle Distributors has improved fleet maintenance efficiency with Pocket Dossier from Arsenault Associates. Pocket Dossier puts the power of Dossier maintenance management software in the hands of technicians wherever they're working, in the shop or in the yard, according to the company.

Silver Eagle is the largest distributor of Anheuser-Busch products by volume in the nation. The company uses Dossier maintenance management software and Pocket Dossier to maintain its warehouse equipment and an on-road fleet which delivers Budweiser and Bud Light, as well as many other Anheuser-Busch and import brands to the southeast Texas cities of Houston, San Antonio, and their suburbs.

The Silver Eagle fleet consists of 320 tractors, 368 trailers, 278 vans, 30 pickups, 61 cars, various other vehicles used to promote product sales, and an off-road fleet of forklifts, sweepers, and scrubbers. Silver Eagle is a participant in the Houston-Galveston Area Council Clean Vehicles/Clean Fleet campaign which is a collaborative and proactive effort to address air quality issues in designated non-attainment areas.

A Dossier user since 1995, Silver Eagle added 28 Pocket PCs in 2006. According to Ed Pritchard, Silver Eagle's senior vice president of fleet management and purchasing, the increased efficiency in labor and productivity has been obvious.

At Silver Eagle, Pocket Dossier links wirelessly to Dossier software running on the company server. Technicians have instant access to Dossier's vehicle data wherever they're working. Handheld access has eliminated the need for technicians to walk to a desktop computer, which may or may not be accessible to them at any given time.

"We decided to implement Pocket Dossier to make it easier for our technicians to do repair orders and access performance reports from their work stations. When they go out to the yard to look at a vehicle, they can look up all the information they need with their handheld on the spot," Pritchard explained. "Mechanics can go straight to the equipment, do what they need to do, and find out what they need to know. It's that simple."

Templates apply to various state inspections and levels of preventative maintenance inspections. The company uses VMRS (Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards) for recording and benchmarking maintenance performance.

However, the time savings aren't limited to the technicians.

Before Pocket Dossier, mechanics filled out paper forms. The information was then keyed into the Dossier system, sometimes with copying errors. Some handwritten entries were illegible.

"Pocket Dossier has been a great enhancement to Silver Eagle fleet operations because it reduces labor costs and enhances shop productivity. In addition, it streamlines our maintenance scheduling, and simply eliminates a lot of paperwork," Pritchard said.