In 1962, James Morrow, then a young entrepreneur, founded a small trucking company by the name of James Morrow & Sons Trucking with a single truck. With over 46 years of continuous service, the company has grown to a 25-truck fleet and in 2006 joined forces with another trucking company to form Ploger Transportation. The Ploger team specializes in truckload freight including books, roll stock paper, and other paper products. The company also ships plastic containers most often used to hold dairy foods such as ice cream, cottage cheese, and sour cream on store shelves.

During its early years, the company's operations were handled using spreadsheets, pen and paper, whiteboards, and other time-tested but problem-prone methods. With the vast amount of recurring and new business the company routinely managed, the Ploger team began to feel suffocated under the weight of their own success. "It simply became impossible to keep track of everything manually," said Ploger Vice President Jerry Morrow. "To be successful these days you need some type of automation, and we knew our business needed to be updated in this respect. We were just bursting at the seams."

In 2002, President Tanya Morrow was approached by Prophesy for a demonstration of the popular DispatchSeries software. As is the case with many growing companies, Tanya did not feel entirely ready for the intimidating step of computerizing their operation. However, necessity drove her to consider a new way of doing things in the hopes that it would remove the burden from their shoulders. Though initially apprehensive, once Tanya had a chance to see the Prophesy Dispatch solution in action she was blown away. She realized then that this software had the potential to vastly improve nearly every aspect of how they ran their business.

After a full review of Prophesy options, the company purchased Prophesy Dispatch with an interface to their existing Peachtree accounting system. The company also added several Prophesy tools including Mileage & Routing for mileage lookups and driving directions, FleetTrax for fleet maintenance and parts inventory management, and TaxTally to handle their complex IFTA fuel tax reporting.

Once implemented, the Ploger team began to see the benefits right away. Jerry Morrow was delighted that his fleet's preventive maintenance was now tracked flawlessly using FleetTrax. Fuel taxes, which were always a thorn in their side, were now a breeze with TaxTally. Morrow was also impressed with the ability to find, store, and retrieve driving directions, saving time and headaches when frequently traveling to customer locations. As time went on the company continued finding new benefits and creative ways to get the most power possible out of their Prophesy system.

Most importantly, Prophesy has helped the company to better serve their customers while simultaneously reducing their overhead costs. With this extra breathing room the company is able to concentrate on expanding its fleet and improving other aspects of the business, which they could never have accomplished before. "Prophesy has allowed us to make so many improvements to our business," said Jerry Morrow. "I don't even know where to start. We have so many more resources at our disposal and much more ability to handle day-to-day operations. And all of this we're able to do more efficiently than we ever could have hoped."

Morrow added, "To put it into perspective, in 2002 our annual revenue was 1.5 million. This year, we have pulled in over 6 million, in a slow economy no less. We couldn't have done it without Prophesy."

For more information about Prophesy's Total Software Solution for Trucking, email moreinfo@mile.com or call (800) 776-6706.