LAS VEGAS — Drivewyze has added to the network of states that are accepting its e-Inspection product, designed to use automation instead of manual processes to complete much of the administrative work that now eats up a driver’s time during an inspection.
At the Truckload Carriers Association annual meeting, Drivewyze said the number of states operating pilot projects is up to seven. When e-Inspection was launched last June, three states were involved: Maine, Maryland and Virginia. The states added by Drivewyze are Kansas, New Hampshire, Vermont and Utah.
“What we’re doing is using our technology and our integration,” Doug Johnson, vice president of marketing at Drivewyze, said of the e-Inspection program in an interview with FreightWaves.
Drivewyze is mostly known for its technology that allows trucks to be granted a bypass at a weigh station by a state using its system. Given that, Johnson said, Drivewyze “is integrated into the ELD and we’re also integrated into the roadside inspection system.”
Straddling the technology between the truck and the state, the idea behind e-Inspection is to use those links to populate the forms that must be filled out in an inspection. “We can take the data directly off the ELD to pre-populate the inspection form,” Johnson said. “We’re reducing all the manual effort.”
Sara Steele, the product manager for e-Inspection, said the program is operating at 17 inspection sites throughout the seven states. While Drivewyze “could turn them all on today,” she said of the other inspection facilities in those states, it has been the choice of the governments to go slow.
“They’re trying to be strategic about it,” she said. E-Inspection is being utilized at busier sites or those where Drivewyze has a particularly large number of trucks participating in the program.
Currently there is no cost for e-Inspection, Steele said. Eventually the program will operate like the Drivewyze bypass product, with users paying a fee and the participating states not charged.
Steele predicted the number of states operating e-Inspection a year from now would be double the current level.
She said a level 3 inspection, which just focuses on credentials, can be completed in five minutes with e-Inspection. At present, it can take up to a half-hour, with most of that time needed for manually filling out forms.
With so much of the manual effort eliminated from the inspection process, Steele said, “they can spend more time looking at the trucks.”
Daniel Patterson, director of safety at Western Express, is a user of e-Inspection and was present at the interview to express support for what he said he’s seen the program do for his company.
He said just last week, the carrier received notification of inspection results, but neither the truck nor the driver were Western Express’. The basic cause, Patterson said, was data inaccuracy, which he believes would not happen with wide adoption of processes like e-Inspection.
Patterson echoed Steele in noting that drastically cutting down on the 25 or 30 minutes now used to fill out paperwork can allow more time for actual inspections. “It allows the trooper to discuss things with the driver,” he said. And even if there’s not a lot to discuss, time is money for drivers. “They’re thinking that ‘the longer I am sitting here, it’s costing me money.’”
Drivewyze identified two other carriers using e-Inspection: J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT) and Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR).
Getting the system up and running involved a three-legged stool. Steele and Johnson both noted that not only do carriers and states need to be willing to sign on for the program, but the various ELD systems that host Drivewyze’s existing system need to be able to take on the additional demands of e-Inspection.
There are only two ELDs now fully integrated with the e-Inspection technology: Platform Science and Geotab. In the prepared statement announcing the wider rollout of e-Inspection, Drivewyze said the ELD manufactured by Trimble is in the process of integrating the software into its system.
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