Possibilities - LoadMart and RAIN - Selling TBBS and TDBS to Truckers

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LOADMART AND RAIN - SELLING TBBS AND TDBS TO TRUCKERS
-----------------------------------------------------

*** From July 1992 Possibilities Newsletter ***
*** Copyright 1992 by eSoft, Inc.  All Rights Reserved ***

LoadMart and RAIN -- Selling TBBS and TDBS to Truckers
by Alan Bechtold

There aren't many profitable businesses you can build successfully from deep 
in the Oregon woods but consulting software engineer Janice Stevens has made 
her company, RAIN, Inc., an exception.  Janice runs her consulting firm and 
online information service from her Oregon home and she's been able to add a 
significant revenue stream to her business by developing TDBS applications
for her clients.  She then leases them space and telephone lines on her own 
TBBS/TDBS system so they can bring those applications to their customers 
with a minimum of effort and expense.

"TDBS is such a neat product it really *MAKES* TBBS; giving the software a 
market segment nobody else is stressing," she said.  "It's an incredible 
tool for creating online applications you can sell to others.  You can just 
go around to potential clients, show them TBBS and TDBS, and ask them if 
they'd like to put an application online -- letting them know you can write 
an application for them.'"

Janice recently created such a TDBS application for LoadMart, Inc., a 
company involved in keeping track of active truck drivers and the various 
shippers who use their services.  It is a clear example of the types of 
TBBS/TDBS applications that can be sold by consultants.

Keeping track of all the information LoadMart brings together is not an easy 
task.  Virtually everything we as consumers buy -- food, clothing, building 
materials, etc. -- is carried by truck at one point or another.  Janice 
quickly saw a way to put TBBS and TDBS to work for LoadMart, bringing 
shippers and haulers together with high speed and accuracy.

"There is another company here that has monitors in truck stops throughout 
the country that show available loads," Janice said.  "Truckers eating in a 
diner can look up and say -- 'Oh -- look -- there's a load.  I'll go and 
call this guy.'  The problem with that system is it offers no way for 
shippers and haulers to seek each other out or to check out each other's 
credentials."

This, Janice explained, is a major drawback.  "You can get a lot of 
unreliable haulers who call in on that service wanting loads," she said.  
"That's a serious problem.  If a guy's not in good financial position and 
you put a load on his truck and it's seized, you lose your load.  This is 
serious business."

After meeting with LoadMart for four or five days to get a complete idea of 
what they wanted their system to do, Janice spent another couple of days 
designing the system's menu structures and overall operating procedure.  
Then she handed it to her programmer for the actual coding.

"I'm a Consulting Software Engineer, not a 'programmer,'" Janice said.  "I 
can program, but I can make more money designing programs than actually 
writing the code.  It's a lot like any other engineering firm.  The 
engineers don't draw the bridge.  The draftsmen draw the bridge.  Most 
programmers are software draftsmen, not designers.  And I have a lot more 
fun because designing is the creative part -- getting the ideas, putting 
them all together and conceptualizing the whole thing."

Of course, the ability to write solid code is central to running a 
successful software consulting business like Janice's.  She's proud of the 
job the programmer she hired did writing the complete LoadMart system -- 
less than 3000 lines of TDBS code -- in just under 40 actual hours.

The combination of Janice's design talent with her programmer's coding 
skills was a solid marriage.  "The application was all written top-down, 
moving through the program from the most general functions to the most 
specific," she said.  "There's none of this jumping around.  All of the 
functions, menu choices, everything is included in one file.  It's written 
modularly, but the entire application is incorporated in a single program 
file.

"The application was designed and written this way because it takes too long 
to chain a program from one separate file to the other," Janice added.  "In 
an online application, speed is of the essence."

Janice said she designs all of her company's online applications with speed 
in mind -- even the public access bulletin board she also runs.  "For 
example, my public BBS is about as plain Jane as you can get," she 
explained.  "It's got some color menus and stuff, but the menus themselves 
have not changed since I first started running a public BBS back in '88, in 
terms of what you see.  There are no graphics, no ANSI pictures.  You can 
log on the system and hop around it bang-bang-bang.  LoadMart was set up 
following the same principals.  I just believe in doing things that way."

Following her principles, LoadMart's menus are simple and straightforward.  
Callers log onto the system and are greeted with a simple menu offering 
access to the two databases that make up the basic system -- one for 
entering and searching for loads and the other for entering and searching 
for trucks.

Truckers enter an origin ZIP code and destination ZIP code and quickly 
receive a detailed on-screen list of loads they might be interested in 
carrying.  Shippers enter loads they want shipped by destination ZIP code, 
and receive detailed on-screen lists of truckers going to those 
destinations.

Both listings can include other pertinent details about the truck drivers 
and shippers, including volume of business, how long they've been in the 
business and more.  "It's everything needed to determine if I want to ship 
with a particular trucker or, if I am a trucker, to accept a listed load," 
Janice said.

The system provides instant access to the information haulers and shippers 
need quickly, but Janice explained there are also callers who need something 
even faster.

"Consider the busy brokerage firm that might have 50 or 100 loads per day," 
she said.  "They don't want to enter all those listings manually, online, at 
$2 per minute.  So we wrote another package that LoadMart customers can run 
on their own computers to enter large numbers of loads or routes offline."

The LoadMart offline entry program (written with Clipper) offers customers 
data entry screens that look exactly like the ones they get online.  
LoadMart customers can enter loads and trucks offline and the program 
creates a special file that is then uploaded to a special menu option on the 
LoadMart TBBS system.  Because both the Clipper and TDBS applications are 
dBase III Plus compatible and use dBase III Plus format database files, the 
uploaded files can be automatically appended to the LoadMart online database 
after they are uploaded.

The LoadMart system all runs as a node on a network parallel with Janice's 
own 16-node public TBBS system.  "I use networking software from CBIS called 
NETWORK O/S," she explained.  "The file server has a little over 6 gigabytes 
online and 15 megabytes cache, and the workstation which is running LoadMart 
is a 386/33 with 8 meg RAM.  I've had zero problems."

In fact, Janice said the only real problem she had was getting reliable 
telephone service to handle all those incoming lines at her rather remote 
location.  "The quote on getting telephone service up here capable of 
supporting the system was about $50,000," she said.

Fortunately, she discovered an innovative way to get around the problem.  
Janice said, "The local phone company was interested enough in what I was 
doing that they wanted to have the system located in their building, so they 
made the necessary filings with the state public utility commission and 
allocated the space and now I'm a tenant there ... the only tenant, 
actually.

"This way I pick up the lines right off the switch, brand new, fresh.  
They're great.  In fact, they were TOO good at first.  The standard modems 
I'm using were being overdriven so we had to build a little device to 
attenuate them.  Now it's working fine."

Now that LoadMart is up and running, Janice is already at work getting more 
clients.

"I love TDBS for this kind of fabrication," Janice said.  "In this kind of 
situation there's no contest.  In fact, I'm talking to a computer company 
right now that might come online with my service and we'll do it with TBBS 
and TDBS.  And we've got another project underway that will be based around 
TDBS and TBBS as well.  Without TBBS and TDBS I wouldn't have been able to 
do this work for these people."

And she's able to do this work nestled comfortably in the Oregon woods, 
living where she wants but still able to provide a profitable service to 
others.  It's not only an enviable formula for success but a proven one.  
According to Janice, if you have the help of TDBS and TBBS the only other 
ingredient you need is imagination.

Janice invites anyone who'd like to tap her imagination to do so, with the 
warning that she's a professional consultant who makes her living selling 
her time and talent -- at $60 per hour.  "That may sound selfish," she said, 
"but my knowledge and my time are the only products I have to sell and I'm 
too busy to give them away."  Spoken like a true professional!  Janice 
Stevens can be reached by calling 503-695-2120 (voice).

- END -
PS0792-3
Rev. 7/92

Copyright (C) 1994 eSoft, Inc., All Rights Reserved.  Permission granted
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