Leonard’s Express was faced not just with significant toll costs. An effective means of consolidating toll data and payments, notes Kyle Johnson, chief information officer, would ensure adherence with cost effective routes and reduce administrative expenses by streamlining business processes.
Compounding the challenge for the Farmington, N.Y.-based, family owned transportation services provider was that its operations are handled at 19 offices throughout the U.S. Additionally, its company drivers and owner-operators were using different transponders for automated toll systems at as many as 25 tolling authorities nationwide.
Providing truckload dry van, refrigerated and flatbed service to 48 states, Quebec and Ontario with a fleet of 180 company-owned power units, more than 600 trailers and the services of 60 owner-operators, Leonard’s Express sought an effective means of addressing all those challenges.
For the past several years, Leonard’s Express has been using Bestpass to take advantage of the company’s bulk purchasing and streamlined toll management services. Included are discounts, consolidated billing, reconciliation and a single transponder for use at a growing number of toll and weigh station bypass networks. The truckload carrier is using the services on all of its company tractors and makes Bestpass offerings, including toll discounts, available to its dedicated owner-operators.
“We’re saving more than $120,000 annually on toll costs with the management solutions provided by Bestpass,” Johnson says. “In addition to cutting direct monthly toll expenses by taking advantage of bulk purchasing toll discounts that are available to us, the Bestpass platform enables us to select and ensure compliance with the most cost effective routes based on accurate, timely toll cost and routing data.
“With Bestpass we have up to date information about tolls that we can use to better manage operations,” Johnson explains further. “For example, we can quickly assess if a toll road is the most cost effective route based on traffic conditions, or if a driver is using unapproved toll roads and take corrective action immediately. The faster we get that information to our managers, the more efficiently we are able to run our operation.”
Bestpass also reduces administrative costs for Leonard’s Express by providing single toll and weigh station bypass transponders and toll management services that consolidate data and payments, and include reconciliation services that address billing issues. Previously, those processes required more than eight hours of administrative time every month.
In May 2014, Leonard’s Express began using daily data updates from Bestpass to more quickly and effectively address toll violation, transponder or routing compliance issues. The Bestpass Data Interchange platform automates integration and exchange of toll and vehicle related information with the fleet’s enterprise management system.
Data Interchange uses a variety of flexible and secure delivery methods and formats to provide actionable data in near real-time. Included are automated and bulk toll updates directly from fleet management and billing systems, vehicle updates for trucks, tractors and trailers, including temporary and leased units, and on demand toll data downloads that normalize billing cycles from tolling authorities to a calendar month.
Features of the Bestpass Data Interchange include grouping of transactional data by cost center, billing group, vehicle location and other parameters. Its data delivery methods include FTP, on-demand user downloads from a client web portal, and advanced automated web service for carriers with IT departments. Data formats include CSV, XLS, XML and PDF.
Bestpass has already provided trucking operations from owner-operators to some of the country’s largest motor carriers with $30 million in toll cost savings. The company processes over $22 million in tolls monthly for more than 250,000 pieces of equipment.
