LOS ANGELES-When Art Ruben started as a messenger boy back in  1971, little did he realize that he would someday own his own company. Nor did he realize that while he had no need of a pocket calculator back then, that his future success in the nineteen-nineties would rest on the back of a computer.
   Yet, that has certainly proved to be the case for Ruben and scores of other operators of profitable delivery companies throughout the country. Their successful experience provides a testament to just how easily technology can be implemented for the benefit of those in the transportation industry.
   For Ruben, it was his experience that taught him the value of maximizing time efficiently, a message that would ultimately lead him to select a computer as a business tool to help him expand his business. "When I first started out I thought I was a mini UPS," he recalled. "I used to run everywhere I went. I always wanted to be quick and do my best."
   Doing his best finally allowed him to open his own courier company in 1990: Action Messenger, in Los Angeles. Right away, he realized that to grow and stay competitive he had to make the move to automate. Selecting the right product proved to be a single matter because of his past knowledge of the business as an employee. "I had first seen an ASCAR computer at a competitor office. At that point, I knew I just had to have one if I wanted to become successful," said Ruben.
   ASCAR, like Ruben, grew up in the delivery business. Hugo Daniel Citera, founded the company in 1978 as a software developer. For the past 16 years they have specialized in serving the specific needs of the transportation industry. "Dan knows the ups and downs of the delivery business. He really stays on top of it," noted Ruben. "By the time the competition catches up to where he was, Dan has already progressed years ahead of them."
   ASCAR, based in Glendale, Calif., provides a wide spectrum of systems, starting from multiuser PC's, to large systems involving LAN's and WAN's. Their wide array of pre-configured systems serves the needs of a small company doing 15 jobs per day, to a large corporation with multiple offices doing 25,000 jobs per day. 
   For example, their Express-Pak Frontline package includes the hardware and software for automatic order-taking, job-ticket writing, rating, invoicing, paperless dispatching, and basic bookkeeping and payroll functions. Their Advantage offering includes all that and adds Human Resources function, plus an optional fully automatic dispatching system. Finally, there is the Private Label service, in which ASCAR's programmers can customize a system to meet the evolving and highly specialized demands of any company.
   For Art Ruben's ACTION MESSENGER company, the Advantage system served his needs quite well. It helped his company grow almost immediately. "We started out as a small two-employee operation, and now seven years later we have 70 employees in L.A. and 20 in Las Vegas," recounted Ruben.
   Ruben credits this success to his system. "it was not a question of good luck. It's because ASCAR has a great product," he added. "how else could I keep track of everything?" 
   Industry-wide evidence has demonstrated that deliveries per driver drop from an average of about 12 per day-for businesses doing 250 deliveries per day-to about 8, when the daily volume reaches 500. It is simply a matter of information overload. According to one delivery magazine's study, many companies experience 25 percent annual growth rates until they encounter these limitations, then stagnate.
   But with a fully automated system, the delivery-per-driver rate has proven to reach 15 deliveries per driver - even when daily volumes reach 1,000 packages. 
   "I can take an order over the phone, have it automatically priced, and transmit it to the driver, all within 30 seconds," said Ruben.
   ASCAR's proprietary Master Dispatcher (M.D.) takes paperless dispatching one step further by completely automating the process of selecting the correct driver to which the order should go with a single keystroke. The information is transmitted over the air and can be received by way of an alpha-numeric pager, a digital cellular telephone, or a handheld computer terminal. Immediate receipt of an order can be automatically confirmed by the driver.
   "Part of our success is attributed to our ability to quickly communicate with our customers and drivers," noted Ruben. Digital capabilities permit such immediate package-tracking information. An order can be called up and rechecked at any given time from anywhere even from remote locations such as a home office.
   "I have a terminal in my home," said Ruben. "I never turn it off. It runs 24 hours per day, seven days a week - I could almost run the whole business from here by myself." A good dispatcher, earning about $189 (including benefits) per day, can handle up to 240 deliveries per day - yielding a cost around 79 cents per delivery ($189 per day/240). But compare that with the cost of an automated system, such as the Master Dispatcher from ASCAR, which averages out to 25 cents per delivery. This produces a savings of 54 cents per delivery, or $129.60 per day, and ultimately an annual savings of $33,670.
   Such technology can allow a small transportation company to quickly grow into a large one. "Last year we increased sales by half-a-million dollars," boasted Ruben. Technological gains do not stop there, through. By automatically integrating the bookkeeping functions of a business into the daily processes, speed and cost-efficiency is increased. "I used to pay a bookkeeper $400 a week to come in on Sunday and Monday just to do my payroll. Now I no longer need them," noted Ruben. "My computer does all of my payroll functions."
   His computer also allows Ruben to ship a package in the most expeditious manner possible. "We only want our customers to make one telephone call, and that is to us. So we handle all of the details on either end of a delivery," he said. "Recently, an attorney called one afternoon to have some court documents delivered to San Francisco by 10 a.m. the next morning. Rather than send a vehicle out to make the (400 mile) trip, we knew it would get there quicker by air."
   Ruben utilized ASCAR's Passport feature to coordinate the pickup and delivery of a package on both ends of an air freight shipment. No other available software company offers this feature. The system automatically arranges for another courier to pick up the package from the airport and complete the delivery to its ultimate destination.
  To ensure that users can take full advantage of every software featuure, most systems comanies provide critical support to users of their product. For example, ASCAR arranges a three-day workshop with each client to teach the operation of the sytem before the client buys the hardware, Free, follow-up classroom training is available each months, a user group meeting offered at least once a year, and additional help is only a telephone call away for pressing needs. A free, 24-hour bulletin board supplies upgrades, new manuals, and new tax tables, as well as conferencing capabilities for users.
  "One thing I like about Dan (Citera) is that he always delivers on what he says. They respond to my comments and they are always enhancing their product in response to the input from their customers. It's not just a buy it and it's done deal," said Ruben.
   ACTION's fleet of delivery vehicles extends from compact cars all the way up to multi-to trucks with liftgates. They even own their own plane. "The flexibility of our computer system allows us to be flexible in meeting the needs of our customers," added Ruben. Such complete service accounts for the bulk of Ruben's success, and he attributes it to technology. "I now have people coming to our office to review our system," he said.
  "In today's climate, you have to be a messenger of the new millennium," observed Ruben. "ASCAR has provided me with a very important tool to meet these needs. I can honestly say that I would not be where I am today without them.