making sure they have tools to do that in a way that’s specific to their communities.”
A New Way of Doing Things When Brad Hayn started as transportation director at
Hoover City Schools in Alabama two years ago, he began evaluating every aspect of the department. “My goal from the beginning was to maximize our
resources while optimizing our finances,” he noted. He observed that Hoover City had generally done a
good job with routing, but little had been changed in 20 years, and records were all kept on paper. “I was taking everyone out of their comfort zone,” he said. “We asked ourselves, are we leveraging the latest developments, with one of those being AI, to maximize our routing processes?” The district turned to the school bus software company
Transfinder to begin optimizing routes. In a quick- ly-growing region, “the goal is to create the most efficient bus routes, all governed by student ride time,” he said. Hayn is a big believer in the power of AI to help. “It will take in that information about where kids live,
what buses we have available, ride time, and it give us a starting point and platform to begin improving our routes
on a daily basis. Are we driving less miles? That’s the goal and that’s the hope, and just being more efficient in how we go about driving those miles,” he explained. The district is using telematics to get cutting-edge
feedback on bus performance and maintenance needs and integrating that information with route optimiza- tion in search of maximum efficiency. Hayn said he hopes to reduce maintenance costs with
more efficient routing and telematics, including enlisting software from Fleetio to automate fleet management and streamline maintenance tickets, schedules and work flow. “To me as a director of transportation, modernizing
your fleet operations is one of the most important things you can do,” Hayn said. “I walked into a department that had been operating 20-plus years and using methods that worked for them, and also a department that had great people. I took notes and learned, and I felt the best thing I could do for them was to help them modernize. I owed it to them as a leader to show we could do this bet- ter. Initially I was worried about the impact it would have on finances, but it has saved us money in the long run. “Vendor costs are down, total costs are down, fuel costs are a little under last year. It all is working out,” he said. ●
Safer Students. Smarter Fleets.
• On-demand video access for faster incident response • Encrypted wireless evidence transfer • Live fleet tracking and operational oversight • Scalable cloud-based management district-wide
gatekeeper-systems.com | T/F: +1 888 666 4833
32 School Transportation News • MAY 2026
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