Fleets reap rewards with Mandata Tacho Now
Transport management systems provider Mandata has emphasised the importance in the current climate of ensuring compliance with tachograph and drivers’ hours rules, and described how fleet operators are employing its Tacho Now system to keep on top of their responsibilities.
“Where DVSA inspectors find a driver or vehicle to be in serious breach of the rules, they may prevent the driver from driving any further, impacting the operator’s ability to generate income,” said Mandata.
“In an industry and economic climate where hauliers’ ability to run their businesses profitably is already severely challenged, keeping drivers and vehicles compliant and on the road is a matter of business survival.”
For many hauliers, the legal requirements mean an employee is required to go out to every single vehicle at the required intervals to download the data manually from the tachograph and drivers’ cards, points out Mandata – which can be an arduous ongoing exercise.
“It also means taking drivers and vehicles off the road, costing the haulier productive driving and delivery time and, as a result, loss of revenue,” said the firm.
“Manually downloading tacho data is costly, time-consuming, and increases the risk of lost or incomplete data.”
Mandata contends that automation is a better approach.
“In recent years, leading transport management system (TMS) providers have developed software that automates the entire process,” continued the company.
“TMS provider Mandata’s innovative Tacho Now subscription service removes the burden on the operator. It does this by automatically downloading all the required data from vehicle tachographs and driver cards – even when vehicles and drivers are out on the road carrying on with business.”
Tacho Now downloads the data from each of the subscribed operator’s digital tachographs and drivers’ cards, according to a configurable download schedule. Then, it uploads the data to Mandata’s cloud servers for safe storage, without any human intervention required.
Operators can view the status and history of tacho data uploads for vehicles and drivers and make ad hoc (unscheduled) requests for extra data downloads at any time.
Once the data is downloaded, Tacho Now can also send it to a third-party tachograph analysis provider such as TruTac for data analysis and compliance reporting. This makes it a completely automated service, says Mandata, which not only saves the operator time, effort, and money, but takes a major compliance responsibility off their hands.
Users of the system include Elddis Transport, a well-established, family-owned haulage and logistics business in Consett in the North-East of England. Subscribing to Tacho Now has strengthened the company’s ability to ensure efficiency and timeliness.
Wayne White, business operations manager of Elddis, said: “Tacho Now provides efficiency in not needing to route vehicles back to the workshop to download data and also provides the information quicker to allow for more timely tacho analysis.”
Bulk powder transport specialist Damac Transporters has been rolling out Tacho Now to its entire fleet over the past 18 months, meanwhile.
Workshop manager Simon Letorey said: “The units are downloaded weekly and the drivers’ cards are downloaded daily. This information is uploaded straight to Tachomaster for analysis…
“It has made tracking our drivers’ and trucks’ working information much easier. Not only have we done away with the need to manually download truck data, which can be a hassle when they are back late on a Friday, but we also have the information to hand much sooner. This is a great help when we need to deal with drivers’ infringements and any other issues.”
The reality is that the haulage industry has been slow to adopt digitisation, let alone automation, says Mandata. But it cites a PwC report on the future of the logistics industry, which observed that: “‘Digital fitness’ is a prerequisite for success: the winners will be those who understand how to exploit a whole range of new technologies, from data analytics to automation and platform solutions.”
Mandata concluded: “Hauliers need to work around ever-increasing challenges in a tough economic climate with high fuel prices, tight laws, rules, and guidelines while still finding ways to remain profitable.
“The challenges aren’t going away, but with the right partner, the right software, and the right digitisation and automation solutions on their side, operators can make a success of every haul.”
