Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/699972
34 commercial carrier journal | july 2016 technology • Safe Fleet acquired Rear View Safety, a provider of backup camera systems and video-based road safety solutions for commer - cial fleets, including government fleets, recreational vehicles, truck, trailer, commercial van, construc- tion, emergency, bus and shuttle, agriculture and industrial vehicles. • Bestpass added Oklahoma's toll roads to its bypass network, allow - ing the company to provide full nationwide U.S. toll road coverage with its Bestpass Complete device by yearend. Customers will receive one consolidated bill at the end of each month. Oklahoma has 606 miles of toll roads, second in the nation behind Florida. • DriverFacts, an online service designed to allow trucking companies to manage commercial drivers' employment and safety records securely and efficiently, made its DriverPortal service avail - able to all nonmember carriers for a monthly fee. DriverPortal automates driver requests for corrections and rebuttals for infor - mation on employment records, including reportable or prevent- able accidents and positive drug and alcohol tests. Carriers that are DriverFacts members receive DriverPortal access as part of their membership benefits. • CarriersEdge, a provider of online safety and compliance training tools, now offers a "Maximizing Fuel Efficiency" course that uses interactive learning to help drivers understand their role in reducing fuel costs. The training program covers a number of real-world factors that influence fuel use and impact fuel costs to provide participants with a comparison of effective and ineffective fuel-sav - ing techniques. A performance summary is provided to drivers. • Fleetio, a provider of fleet maintenance and asset manage - ment software, released a digital purchase order module designed to allow users to streamline their approval and payment process - es, create POs faster and gain complete visibility into purchasing history and habits while reducing clerical expenses and errors and INBRIEF Vigillo: Safety fitness rule no big improvement C oncerns about underlying Compli- ance Safety Accountability data- related issues aside, would the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Safety Fitness Determination carrier rating rule actually allow the agency to expand the number of unsafe carriers it targets each month? Not really, according to a report from private carrier rating firm Vigillo, which concludes there's just a 0.4 percent dif- ference between the number of carriers the agency would be able to review and place out of service under the new rule compared to its current system. Vigillo compares such a change to a 250-pound person dropping a single pound, or a marathon runner shaving two minutes off of a 260-minute run. "If we reduced the headcount of federal government employees of 2.7 million by 0.4 percent, we'd still have 2.7 million," Vigillo's report states. FMCSA's Safety Fitness rule proposed in January would usher in an era in which the agency relies heavily on roadside inspection and violation data instead of on-site and off-site investigations to determine whether a carrier is fit to oper- ate. FMCSA says the rule would allow it to target 75,000 carriers a month — about 150 times more than it can now. Vigillo says that while it's true that many more carriers under the SFD proposal would meet the minimum thresholds for intervention (11 inspec- tions, as proposed in the rule), only 67 DOT-registered carriers would be identi- fied as Unfit to operate once non-English speaking driver violations are removed from the system. – Todd Dills J.J. Keller launches ELD rollout system for fleets J .J. Keller & Associates introduced a new service – Driver DataSense Plus with ELD Rollout – designed to help carriers ease their transition from paper logs to electronic logging devices. The rollout system includes a custom ELD implementation plan, installation of J.J. Keller ELDs, configuration of J.J. Keller's Encompass back-office com- pliance system, setup of the J.J. Keller Mobile logging app and driver training on the system. After J.J. Keller's Managed Services team completes the rollout, the system will aggregate ELD data, along with paper log data and driver time sheets. A J.J. Keller employee will analyze the data to look for compliance and performance issues and help carriers resolve problems. "This new service makes it far easier for fleets to meet FMCSA's ELD mandate deadline by letting us facilitate the process," said Rustin Keller, J.J. Keller executive vice president and chief operating officer. – Matt Cole Vigillo concludes there's just a 0.4 percent change between the number of carriers FMCSA would be able to review and place out of service. J.J. Keller's Driver DataSense Plus with ELD Rollout service is designed to help carriers ease their transition from paper logs to ELDs.