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Founded in 1935, Roto-Rooter is the largest provider of plumbing and drain cleaning services in North America. Roto-Rooter operates businesses in more than 100 company-owned territories and more than 500 franchise territories, serving approximately 90% of the U.S. population and 55% of the Canadian population. Russell Warner, Inc (d.b.a. Roto-Rooter) currently operates a fleet in excess of 150 vehicles in the Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Sacramento areas. With this fleet, they collectively handle between 220 and 310 jobs a day, not including estimates (approximately 20-30% more).

With RASTRAC, Roto-Rooter has gone from writing orders on paper and reciting them on the radio to an automated dispatch system in which the calls are entered and scheduled for service. Jobs are then sent to the technicians via a paging gateway or over the internet to an alpha pager. The plumbers then acknowledge the page by entering a simple code on their dash-mounted Mobile Data Terminals.


"Do it all from the map."


Plumbers send customized alerts to the dispatch center, creating a comprehensive, at a glance, map display, showing the status of all vehicles.

When a customer calls the Roto-Rooter Los Angeles branch for service, the customer service rep can easily view the availability of plumbers in the customer’s area on a map. The dispatcher looks at a RASTRAC map of the LA area, with the status of all the technicians in the field. This gives the reps the ability to dispatch calls without the need for voice communication.

• When a driver is available for a job, his icon turns bright yellow.
• When the driver is enroute to the job, his icon turns blue.
• When the driver arrives at the job’s location, his icon turns dark green.
• When the driver has completed the job, his icon goes from green to bright red.

“We're gaining about an hour a day per technician”
Visual information gives the dispatchers precious extra seconds to pick out what would be the best job for the plumber to go to next. The decisions that the dispatcher then makes are based upon the skills, parts and location of the technician, along with the requirements of the customer’s order and location. This allows the dispatcher to send the best available person to the closest job.

“…able to provide the fastest, most efficient service.”
Mr. Wheeler continues, "When a customer needs their plumbing repaired they want it now and we want to be able to provide them with the fastest, most efficient (in other words "excellent") service. The problem of the customers making unreasonable requests for service is over.”

“No problem, I have a technician available in your neighborhood right now! I'll page him with your address and job information, he should arrive within the next 30 minutes."

“Vehicle location can give us information that helps us avoid crossing the paths of service vans.”
When someone needs a second technician’s help on a job, it is easier to accurately tell who is closest to the job.

Messages have been added for:

• Someone needs a second truck on the job
• When they need history information on the jobsite
• When they go to lunch (when they finish lunch, available again)
• When they fill up with gas (they also send their odometer mileage)
• When they are off call for the night (goodnight)
• When there is an emergency situation (we know they need assistance and we know where they are) so we can dispatch someone close by to help them