Drivewyze Partners With Bestpass to Better Align Tolling, Bypass Services
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Drivewyze and Bestpass Inc. have joined forces so fleets can better leverage their toll management and weigh station bypass services, the companies announced Jan. 4.
Bestpass provides toll payment and management options for commercial fleets. Drivewyze operates a connected truck services platform and weigh station bypass network. Their partnership is intended to streamline their services while providing fleets with better tolling data.
“Our collaboration can improve the experience right at the fleet level and right at the driver level,” Drivewyze CEO Brian Heath said. “We’ve made sure that by working together fleets will have better information. They can look at their own data to be able to determine the value of our services and to improve their control over things like toll costs. The value definitely extends beyond our own customer bases.”
Heath
The partnership involves the companies aligning their offerings to streamline onboarding and support for fleets adopting weigh station bypass and toll management services. The companies also are collaborating on a trip report that will provide GPS-based toll event data.
“It became pretty obvious to me that we should be working together,” Bestpass CEO Tom Fogarty said. “We both have a large presence in a space that really needs increased automation and increased innovation.”
Fogarty noted the partnership answers customer demand with better alignment and coordination so fleets can adopt their products easier, minimize their onboarding times and maximize their return on investment.
It became pretty obvious to me that we should be working together.
Bestpass CEO Tom Fogarty
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“It’s nice that we’ve been able to provide a great value proposition around toll management,” Fogarty said. “But when I go to my customers and ask them what they would like us to do more of, it’s always help to solve complex challenges through automation.
“And when I asked specifically what areas, bypass is a big one. It’s a big growing space, very complementary in that we both serve the same buyer and we’re both aiming at the same areas of improving efficiency, effectiveness and safety for our clients.”
Heath noted that customers have been asking both companies to collaborate to better integrate their tolling management and weigh station bypass services. He noted that coordinating both services can be difficult for customers because they’re both delivered by two fundamentally different technologies.
We are happy to announce our partnership with @Drivewyze to offer our customers the most extensive available network of toll and weigh station bypass opportunities: https://t.co/qxDqMNz3K8
#trucking #toll #bypass #transportation pic.twitter.com/uWd5O82aZd — Bestpass (@bestpassinc) January 4, 2023
“By working together, by both companies collaborating, we can share information directly that’s going to make the activation and onboarding of those fleets much more streamlined,” Heath said. “So take the weight of that effort off of our mutual customers to make migrations to either the Bestpass platform or the Drivewyze platform easier.”
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The toll event data report is intended to provide fleets with more accurate data for when trucks enter tolling areas. The Drivewyze platform will be used to collect toll road entry and exit events data that fleets can use when investigating violations, overcharging and fraud incidents. Bestpass will further support the report with its toll data collection. A fleet doesn’t need to be either a Drivewyze or a Bestpass customer to request a toll trip report. They can be prospects for either company. Fleets only need to agree to activate Drivewyze analytics on a compatible ELD to get a toll trip report.
“There are some real pain points out there,” Heath said. “If you think about tolling right now, the charges that a fleet has, the violations they get, the overcharges, the potential fraud, all those are based on transponder-based data. And with Drivewyze collaborating with Bestpass to roll out this toll report, you’re going to get a really highly accurate GPS-based source of truth. Any fleet can look at the GPS events and they can compare it to the charges that they’re getting based on their transponders, and that’s really important.”
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Heath added that the report provides an independent reference list that fleets can use to verify tolling events. That includes checking whether they are being overcharged or a violation was wrong.
“It goes beyond what the industry has looked at in the past, which is comparing GPS cookie data,” Heath said. “We collect data by the second just at those points, and we’re able to determine exactly when a vehicle is entering and exiting those toll roads. And it makes the comparison to the transponder-based events much easier.”
The Drivewyze PreClear weigh station bypass service covers more than 840 sites in 45 states and provinces. Drivewyze Safety+ is an in-cab safety alerts and driver-coaching service. Bestpass works with over 50 tolling authorities across the U.S. providing a payment platform with a focus on nationwide toll management for commercial fleets.
