Toll Management Proves Helpful to Curb Mounting Fees
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tolls have become a reality for many carriers, and handling the mounting fees associated with traveling through several regions of the country has become a cumbersome challenge for cost managers.
A panel led by Bob Trent, senior vice president of external affairs at PrePass Safety Alliance; Jolene Wright, director of tolling operations at PrePass; and Jason Higginbotham, chief financial officer at Ozark Motor Lines, discussed fleet toll management during American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition on Oct. 13.
“Managing [toll costs] sometimes is more of a headache than even the cost of the tolls themselves,” Trent said. “The different tolling agencies having different customer service paths, all the different ways to receive invoices, and the fact that you’re getting invoices from every single different tolling authority.”
He explained that toll management has become an administrative burden that touches all facets of the trucking industry, from owner-operators to the largest fleets. The panel discussed the challenges with tolling and how fleets are finding ways to use different tools to more effectively manage their tolls to ensure they are only paying the correct amount.
Wright noted that the 5,000-plus miles of tolling roads consist of bridges, tunnels, HOV lanes and metro-area expressways, which are a recent adaptation to pay tolls.
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She stressed that with more than 80 toll agencies across the country, it becomes difficult for fleets to sign up for accounts on multiple sites, especially without having a good understanding of the overall costs spent on toll fees.
“You have to manage multiple accounts with your fleet’s information to make sure that those are all up to date,” Wright explained. “We know tolls are expensive and they’re only going to get more expensive.”
She added that managers must figure out what they are paying in tolls, although, for some, it may be a mystery altogether.
“A lot of times when we are tracking, fleets actually don’t know what they’re spending. I have talked to many carriers who are like, ‘I really don’t even know how much we spend. I don’t know,’ ” Wright described, “because it’s all over the map.”
Ozark’s Higginbotham said that having a tolling service, such as PrePass, to monitor costs through a bevy of road fees helps alleviate confusion as well as discover discrepancies that may not have been clear before.
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“One of the things that we didn’t know was a problem that we were having until we went to tolling management was max tolls,” he said, describing a situation where drivers would forget or misplace the toll ticket, forcing them to pay the maximum toll fee when exiting. “Suddenly, the driver had only gone on a 30-mile run. That should have been a $30 toll. But instead, he was getting hit with the max total. We were eating that cost, and didn’t know it was a problem until we started getting electronic tolling.”
Wright concurred that allocating the fees is important for managers to know which fleet or cost center is incurring the cost. “That’s one benefit of having a full management system in that it allows you to take those costs and allocate them with the detail automatically,” she said.
Trent. (John Sommers II/Transport Topics)
Another benefit Wright noted was the ability to navigate through electronic trends such as plate imaging. In general, she said, tolling stations cater to passenger vehicles, especially in cases of license plate imaging to properly assign toll fees to travelers. For a tractor-trailer combination, it complicates efforts due to whether the tractor is associated with the attached trailer.
Wright recommended tolling devices for fleets that would ultimately trim toll fees, in some cases, for instance, with the New York State Thruway, up to 60%.
“If you go with the device, then you will get the better pricing, and some of this pricing is significant,” she said. “Those tolls are already expensive, because you are dealing with the bigger vehicles. That’s where things are going.”
Wright and Higginbotham. (John Sommers II/Transport Topics)
Higginbotham also brought up customer service as an advantage to having a tolling management system. Going through such a system allowed his fleet to have the management provider connect with the tolling service directly to ensure prompt service.
“Before, we didn’t speak to tolls, we paid them. We didn’t know the difference between New York State Thruway, Texas Tag [TxTag], whoever,” he said. “[If there was an issue], we’d call the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and to them, we’re nobody there. We’re just calling a 1-800 number or the next person in line for the call.”
Higginbotham added that with a toll management system, it was less cumbersome to resolve tolling issues by having an intermediary on their behalf.
“That toll problem that you’ve got, they’re getting an answer,” he said. “Why not leverage up on a scale of contact volume and enjoy the benefits of that? That has been a huge benefit for us.”
Trent concluded that one of the goals of a tolling management system is to ultimately pay the right amount at a toll station.
“Tolls are where the fees begin, not where they end,” he said. “Getting to the point where the carrier can verify and validate is one of the keys.”
