Since you’re already reading this magazine it tells me two things. First, you're dedicated to effective fleet maintenance. Second, you’re always open to new ideas and want to see what other fleets are doing to up their maintenance management game.
As we all know, proper fleet maintenance is critical for any successful fleet, particularly in light of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) safety enforcement program by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Maintenance records and driver inspection reports are among the many things state and federal inspectors now examine more closely.
COORDINATED EFFORT
Among other things, an effective maintenance program requires routine driver inspections to identify maintenance issues before they become out-of-service violations.
Addressing those maintenance issues in a timely manner requires a sustained and coordinated effort between drivers and maintenance shops. This effort can result in a safer and more efficient fleet operation.
Over a long period of time, a sustained, highly successful maintenance program can help drivers and your company earn more clean inspections, which in turn improves your company's safety record and score. Also, good maintenance practices can deliver lower operating costs and potentially more loads, since that’s what shippers increasingly look for when they consider which trucking companies to hire.
CMRS TRANSPONDER TECHNOLOGY
I’d like to propose that as all of your hard work improves your fleet and shop operations, it can and should leverage another advantage: weigh station bypasses.
While weigh station bypass has been around for two decades, only 10 percent of truck fleets and operators currently use it. Here’s why. For the last 20 years, the only way to accomplish weigh station bypass was through traditional transponder technology – akin to a hard-wired telephone, since weigh stations use expensive transponder poles with short distance radio transmitters.
Now, with the choice of mobile-based commercial vehicle weigh station bypass, which uses Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS) transponder technology, services can be deployed to all fixed and mobile enforcement sites across the country without any installation costs. CMRS transponders employ the $380 billion infrastructure investment that wireless cellular carriers have made in providing mobile phone and data coverage. Deployment is happening rapidly.
SAFETY RATING IMPROVEMENT
You might ask: “If my trucks keep getting weigh station bypasses, then how can we get more clean vehicle inspections to establish or improve our safety ratings?”
By participating in a bypass program, whether it’s mobile-based or transponder-based, fleets still see a random number of their trucks pulled in for inspection. So, unless your fleet is in dire need of getting a lot of clean inspections quickly, not every truck needs to be inspected. In fact, that would cost your operation a great deal of time and money.
Mobile-based weigh station bypass offers an accessible alternative. In most cases, it can be downloaded onto a driver’s smartphone or tablet.
The service also can be activated on popular electronic logging devices (ELDs) offered by PeopleNet (www.peoplenetonline.com), Rand McNally (www.randmcnally.com) and Zonar (www.zonarsystems.com), since they all employ CMRS transponder technology. A free analytics tool available on select ELDs provides fleets, for the first time, a highly accurate estimate of their savings before activation.
BYPASS RATE
While the analytics tool identifies the potential of mobile-based weigh station bypass, a fleet’s actual bypass rate depends on a variety of things, including carrier registration, tax compliance and, most importantly, the FMCSA’s ISS (Inspection Selection System) safety score.
On average, we’re finding that most fleets and operators get bypasses more than 80 percent of the time. Barring random inspections, those with the best scores get a free pass 98 percent of the time. Even those whose ISS scores are a work in progress can expect bypasses 50 percent to 75 percent of the time, provided their taxes and registration are in order.
In addition, mobile-based technology can augment data from random vehicle inspections, allowing the FMCSA to issue truck fleets or operators satisfactory ratings in one or more of the seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) which FMCSA uses to quantify the on-road safety performance of carriers and drivers under CSA.
BETTER DATA
I envision the day when mobile-based weigh station bypass technology can create smart transponders, which could give commercial vehicle inspection officers the ability to conduct some form of automated Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance inspection wirelessly. Truck operators and fleets could voluntarily participate, providing vehicle inspectors access to hours of service and other driver data, in exchange for potential CSA credit.
Not only can mobile-based weigh station bypass help fleets and operators further leverage their maintenance programs to gain even more benefits, such as reduced fuel costs and improved productivity and efficiency, but also it can help quickly resolve some endemic issues with the adequacy and accuracy of safety data. This could result in fewer truck fleets and operators being unfairly judged by regulators and customers.
Leo Jolicoeur serves as vice president of sales and marketing for Drivewyze (drivewyze.com), the nation's largest weigh station bypass service. As of January, it offers weigh station bypass at more than 400 locations in 31 states. Before joining Drivewyze, he served as executive vice president and chief marketing officer for @Road, a leading provider of fleet management services, before it was bought by Trimble in 2007.
