Businesses in the Fuel Price Crunch

Businesses in the Fuel Price Crunch
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-ybpower19sep19,0,7930131.story?page=1&coll=sfla-business-headlines

An interesting article this morning. In the aftermath of Katrina it seems the media, large and small markets; are spending their time reporting Chertnof's and Nagin's posturings or Bush's latest flyover ... if Rita hits the US, Bush has his staff on full alert so he can fly over and look for rich Republican's mansions to rebuild at least one day earlier than his dismal (except for Trent Lott) showing after Katrina.

Anyway, back to business. The thread that interweaves through the whole news article on small Florida businesses being slammed by gas prices is intelligent use of technology. from making sure take home trucks just go back and forth to home to optimizing routing (hate to tell you this but US Zip codes are not arranged in any intelligent geographic order, they are arranged to minimize the distance from post office to mail customer ... unless your business is to deliver envelopes 6 days a week to everyone along certain streets, optimizing routes via zip codes is like guessing if Rita is going to keep on through the Straits of Florida as the map shows, or if she might veer off and perhaps give Chertnof and the TSA Jackboots another chance to see how badly they can screw up again this season.

The lest important way I see technology saving these small businesses is in direct savings resulting from monitoring speeding and cowboy driving. Many business owners want to keep their head in the sand, but it happens, every day, and it happens big time.

Buy GPS tracking from me, buy it from one of my competitors, but do _something_ aside from wringing your hands over fuel prices. They aren't going down.