You don't need to be a large company to take advantage of wireless technology. Ball Park Pedicabs, a bicycle-cab service that serves San Diego as well as events throughout the country, is using Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking technology to try to improve its business. Ball Park is a small company, with a handful of staff who manage 75 contract riders in San Diego and a couple dozen or so at special events like the Super Bowl. Like bicycle messengers and similar local-delivery businesses, Ball Park has no technology staff.

Ball Park has several uses for the GPS technology:

• Provide dispatch services to pedicab drivers, which president Ira Fefferman hopes will result in more rides per cab and thus more revenues to both the driver and to Ball Park. He also hopes it will let him work with hotels and bars so they can call his dispatch on behalf of their customers; currently, pedicab drivers hang around such establishments hoping for customers, and most such establishments don't like having the pedicabs doing that.
• Provide efficient routing information to drivers, both to increase the number of trips and reduce unnecessary exertion by drivers.
• Track pedicab location for emergencies and to help lost drivers get back on track.
• Track pedicab location to provide advertisers maps of where the pedicabs have been during the ad campaign, to demonstrate what kind of audience likely saw the ads (Ball Park recently began selling billboard ad space on its pedicabs).

Pedicab drivers use a Nextel cell phone that has a GPS locator as well as Nextel's push-to-talk walkie-talkie-like service that works across the country. Ball Park started using local walkie-talkie service, but found that its range was very limited and easily thwarted by tall buildings. It also required coordinators to be on the ground in each location to handle dispatch and driver inquiries. With the national service, Ball Park has been able to centralize the dispatch in one location while serving drivers in locations throughout the country. Ball Park uses Televigation's TeleNavtrack software to track the pedicabs through online maps, as well as to generate the historic route information shown to advertisers. The Nextel and Televigation services cost about $50 per month per pedicab, and Ball Park can increase or decrease the number of pedicabs covered as needed. Not all pedicabs get the service — some riders prefer to manage their business directly rather than use Ball Park's dispatch service, for example. So far, Fefferman is not charging for use of the service, though he may do that once it's clear what the payoff is.