might give a weight capacity, show the unit as a flat bed or cradle snatcher, or mention the unit carries a can of Diesel fuel. The name of the staff on the car might be noted. At the start of a shift, the dispatcher would note the unit "available" and time stamp the card. At the assignment to a call, the call information would be written on the card and the card might be stamped at the moment the assignment is read to the tow car crew. The string of notes and time stamps allows dispatch staff to get a clear picture of the status of a small fleet. Some systems use shelving with red and green lights and a switch at the back of the card slot. If the resource's card is pushed all the way into the card slot, the switch is actuated and an indicator lamp turns red. This identifies the tow car whose card occupies that slot as not available, or assigned to a call. Leaving the card pulled partway out leaves the indicator green, showing the dispatcher that unit is available. Is anyone available? The lights are supposed to give the dispatch staff a snapshot of their resource situation. A major flaw of this system is that cards are inside shelves and trying to look at an entire set of cards to evaluate the overall situation requires the dispatcher to pull out every card, one at a time, and read it. If two or more resources are sent to the same call, the dispatcher has a lot of writing to do. Punched tags Punched tag systems employ a set of pegs with each peg holding tags for one unit in the dispatch fleet. Each vehicle working the current shift has a peg with a tag describing the unit's current status. A time clock, similar to the one that stamps work hours on a time card, is used to stamp times on each tag. At the beginning of a work day, the resource's identifier may be posted above the peg. The unit's start time is stamped and their status is written on the tag. Each time the resource's status changes, a new tag is written and the tag is time stamped in order to log the time the unit's status changed. The peg collects a stack of tags through the work shift. In a tow truck