The Evolution Of HHG Miles, Software
JOHN BENDEL
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
The 20th anniversary of Rand McNally's MileMaker software was briefly noted in HDT last month. But the program and its genesis deserve more than just fleeting mention.
MileMaker is based on the Household Goods (HHG) Mileage Guide created to help moving companies establish meaningful rates. Beginning in 1936 at the behest of the American Movers and Storage Assn., Rand McNally gathered mileage information kept by county governments around the country.
Then as now, mile markers on county roads pinpointed precise locations for maintenance and emergency purposes. The counties knew the mileage on any single segment of road, say from one town to another. Rand McNally compiled that information into a single source and created rules for deterimining usable truck routes from any point in the country to virtually any other.
By 1980, trucking deregulation and the rise of the truckload industry made the HHG guide more important than ever. Truckload carriers did the same kind of point-to-point hauling as movers, and it was natural for them to adopt the HHG mileage guide for rating. That led to some popular misconceptions about HHG miles. Drivers noticed that the HHG miles used to compute their compensation were sometimes different from the miles driven on the actual trip.
According to Mark Scholzen, data manager for Rand McNally, that was caused by a number of things. First, of course, the driver might not have taken the most direct route. Another problem was the use of key points within cities from which mileages are measured.
"In the mileage guide, the town symbol or mileage basing point is where the mileage originates or terminates. If you have a mileage guide you'll notice that all the large cities are HHG key point cities and within them you'll see a green circle or a dot, which is the mileage basing point for that city."
That, he explained, is where mileage measurements stop and start for the entire city, even sprawling cities like Los Angeles with many miles from one end to the other.
"A driver might say, I'm not going to the central city. I've got to drive all the way to the south end of the city. Therefore if I'm coming from the north, I'm getting cheated out of some miles," Scholzen said.
But if a driver were coming to that same location from the south the reverse would be true, the driver would be gaining mileage. "The idea behind the mileage guide is that those situations — over time — result in a wash," he explained.
Now those discrepancies are diminishing; but first a bit more history.
In 1982, Rand McNally introduced MileMaker, a computerized version of the HHG mileage guide.
"At that time, it required a specific skill set and a staff of people to actually use (the mileage guide) and make manual calculations. Now the staff could be replaced by software that did it faster and more accurately," said Regina Williams, Rand McNally product development manager.
Some of the first MileMaker customers were large government entities that paid for freight transportation by the mile, she said.
At that time, business computers tended to be mainframes, so that's what MileMaker was originally made for. But the product evolved quickly.
In 1983, Rand McNally made MileMaker available on a time-share basis. The company supplied a small terminal that could dial in to Rand McNally where customers could run routes and obtain mileages. In 1987, the company developed an RS-232 — or serial — interface that enabled customers to access MileMaker directly from other computer applications — enterprise and dispatch programs, for example. At about the same time, Rand McNally introduced Micro MileMaker for Unix, a platform then gaining popularity in office networking.
In 1992, the PC DOS version of MileMaker appeared for the desktop computers proliferating in business and government offices everywhere. The Windows version of MileMaker was introduced in 1995.
"With Windows came the exciting part — mapping," said Williams. "For the first time you could actually see a map displayed on your computer as opposed to just seeing the mileage and text. It opened up a whole new world."
There were other changes as well. While MileMaker was adapted for new computer environments, its workings were evolving. Each edition of software brought new functionality. For example, MileMaker began to offer more than one way to determine mileage.
Using different modes available in the software, customers could calculate mileage by ZIP code, by "lat-long" — shorthand for latitude-longitude — or by Standard Point Location Code, or SPLC. ("It's just a numeric identifier for a place," explained Scholzen.) These methods do not refer to metropolitan area base points.
Meanwhile, some rules from basic HHG Mileage Guide have changed too. Take the so called "traversing rules" that were eliminated between the 17th and 18th editions.
"Traversing rules said that if you crossed through a key point area, say Chicago, you had to recalculate the route to go through Chicago's base point on the map. They've elected to go to more of a point-to-point system," Schozen explained.
So a route can now be calculated directly to or from say, Lawndale, Calif. — even though Lawndale is within Los Angeles — without calculating the route through the Los Angeles base point. The result over time should be fewer driver complaints about short mileages.
Meanwhile, through all this evolution, Rand McNally continues to support all the MileMaker versions mentioned here — with one technical exception. Time-sharing is no longer supported, but in its place the company now offers Intelliroute Online over the Internet, which includes HHG mileage and is much more accessible than time sharing ever was.
