Customer Quick Insights on ClearPathGPS
As his asphalt paving company grew to include crews working all across Central California, Scott Ramsey realized he needed an automated solution for employee time tracking. After a disappointing experience with their first vendor: including unreliable GPS signals and an unresponsive support team—Ramsey Asphalt went looking for a better partner. Below is an excerpt of an interview with Scott, who shares how ClearPathGPS fleet tracking has been instrumental in helping him improve his operations, support the fast growth of his company (from 17 to 80+ employees in last 5 years), give advice to others considering GPS fleet tracking, and more.
About Ramsey Asphalt Construction
Keeping California’s Central Coast on reliable ground since 1999
If you’ve spent any time in the California counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, or San Luis Obispo, chances are you’ve encountered the expert work of Ramsey Asphalt Construction.
For more than 20 years, the company has provided paving services for commercial and government projects across this large swath of California territory. That’s why it’s likely any resident of the area—and even many visitors—have come in contact with Ramsey Asphalt, driving over a road or parking in a lot paved by the company.
Just a few of the businesses that have hired Ramsey Asphalt to pave their properties include Starbucks, Home Depot, Costco, Albertsons, Staples, Best Buy, Denny’s, McDonald’s, and Carl’s Jr.
Q: Before ClearPathGPS, you were working with another GPS provider. Can you tell us about that?
I originally wanted GPS tracking on our trucks to make it easier to track employees’ time on job sites and to make sure those times were accurate and we were paying the right amounts. So I asked our company’s cell phone provider for recommendations, and they recommended themselves.
That solution failed completely from the start. I don’t think we gathered one day’s worth of GPS data from a single truck. So the cell company put us in touch with a subcontractor that did GPS fleet tracking. That worked okay for a while, but then it started getting unreliable. And at that point, our crews had gotten used to having a GPS system automatically logging their times onsite, so they weren’t even keeping estimates themselves from day-to-day.
Suddenly, we were going days without any tracking information from our vehicles. That meant I had no way of knowing how much to pay my employees. That was bad enough when we were a company with 15 people or so in the field. But we’ve grown so much in the five years since then—we now have more than 80 employees out there—that if we were relying on a GPS tracking service like that today, not having dependable time tracking data would be a catastrophe!
Q: How’d you find out about ClearPathGPS, and why’d you decide to give us a try after that bad experience with the other provider?
I called a few of the general contractors we do regular work for, hoping to find a recommendation. One of them told us about ClearPathGPS—raved about it, actually. He said, “We put the ClearPathGPS trackers on everything we send into the field: trucks, trailers, even porta-potties.”
Now, I trust that GC’s judgment completely. But ClearPathGPS also had a couple of other things going for it right out of the gate. First, it was a local company, based here in Santa Barbara. That gave me peace of mind because the other provider was on the East Coast, and when I wanted to go into their offices and raise hell—which happened a lot—I obviously couldn’t. Turns out the ClearPathGPS service works so well, and the customer service team there is so great, them being local is a bit of a moot point!
The other thing I really appreciated was that the GC who recommended ClearPathGPS covers a lot of the same geographic areas we do. They told me that even when they have jobs that take them away from the cities and into the hills or rural areas, the GPS signal still works perfectly. That was another constant problem we had with the previous provider—our trucks would lose the signal and we’d get no GPS data. Knowing ClearPathGPS was this reliable gave me peace of mind as well.
Q: So you signed up for month-to-month service with ClearPathGPS. Did the time tracking work the way you needed it to?
Absolutely. I had a minute-by-minute log of every truck’s whereabouts all day, every day. Put that together with the ClearPathGPS location data, and all I needed to do was check each vehicle’s arrival time at a job site and their departure time, plus any back and forth that might happen midday for a lunch break.
And as I said, the system was reliable even in those remote areas, so we never had periods of time without a GPS location of our trucks. Turns out I was right to have peace of mind signing up with ClearPathGPS.
Then we made time tracking even easier with the geozones tool in the ClearPathGPS app. All we had to do was draw a virtual boundary around our headquarters here. Then, every time a truck left for a job and crossed that geozone, I’d get an email alert. I’d get another alert later in the day when that truck came home and crossed the boundary again. So I’d spend just a few minutes adding those hours up at the end of a pay period, and I had the exact figures for each employee’s check. It was awesome. It still is awesome.
Q: You’ve said that your team has found other ways to use the GPS tracking app to improve your business, and even help you grow. Can you share a few?
For one thing, the live tracking info really helps us provide excellent service to our customers. If a customer calls and wants to know when to expect a crew, my office team can just check the real-time map. They find the crew scheduled for that upcoming job, check the vehicle’s location, then check that against the customer’s job site, and get an ETA.
So, rather than having to call the cell number of the foreman or other crew members, and ask them where they are and when they expect to get to the site, my office team can now grab all that information in seconds and give it to the customer.
Another benefit—one I never even thought about until well after we got ClearPathGPS—is that it helps the repair teams at my shop get our vehicles and equipment fixed and back onto job sites faster.
Say we find out a piece of machinery broke down at a job site, and we’re going to need that equipment functioning the next morning for another job. Our guys at the shop can check the ClearPathGPS app and see exactly where the truck carrying it is, and how long they have before the truck makes it to the shop. With that information, they know how much time they have to gather up the tools they’ll need, find replacement parts, and clear shop space to start working as soon as that machine comes home. That’s huge.
Q: You also mentioned something about jobs classified as certified-payroll assignments. Can you explain how ClearPathGPS helps with them?
When we take on a public-works project or apply for a contract with a local government, those projects require precise documentation of our employees’ time for payroll purposes. Thanks to ClearPathGPS, I have more confidence than ever in going after these types of jobs, because we can provide those records of hours worked, accurate to the minute.
No matter how strict a city’s documentation demands are for employee timecards, we can meet them. And in fact, we’ve earned a strong reputation for documenting our hours worked on these government projects, which helps us get more of them. That’s one example of how ClearPathGPS has played an important role in Ramsey Asphalt’s growth over the years.
Q: Before we let you go, any words of wisdom for other entrepreneurs considering a GPS tracking solution?
Sure, and let me speak directly to that entrepreneur:
If you’re thinking, This sounds like a lot of work. I don’t have time for this…. I get it. I had that same thought. I don’t have time for learning complicated new technologies either. Like you, I’ve got a business that demands my attention all the time.
But trust me: This ClearPathGPS app really doesn’t take any time. It’s easy to use. You’ll figure it out fast. And soon you’ll be finding one benefit after another, just like my team did.
Thank you Scott for sharing how you’re using ClearPathGPS to grow your business!
We appreciate you taking the time to talk with us, and for the great intel on how you’re using ClearPathGPS fleet tracking to save time, improve customer service, and provide accurate records of hours worked that will satisfy even the strictest customers!
