Drivewyze now offers its weigh station bypass service at 11 permanent and mobile sites in South Carolina increasing the number of states it now serves to 38.
The addition of the 11 sites also means Drivewyze now offers weigh station bypass at nearly twice as many locations nationwide as the leading transponder-based weigh station bypass service. Joining its service network of more than 600 weigh stations and inspection sites across the United States, the new sites are located on U.S. Interstates 20, 26, 77, and 95, plus U.S. Highway 17.
“Truck fleets and drivers traveling north and south along the I-95 corridor will now find weigh station bypass opportunities on most stretches of interstate from Maine to Florida,” said Brian Heath, president of Drivewyze. With the addition of South Carolina, Drivewyze offers weigh station bypasses in 14 of the 16 states that make up the I-95 Corridor Coalition. The coalition is an alliance of transportation agencies with jurisdiction over I-95 from the State of Maine to the State of Florida, with affiliate members in Canada.
“Drivewyze uses the latest in GPS and cellular service technology to deliver weigh station bypass instead of dated transponder technology, which can get damaged or lost,” Heath said. “Unlike short-range transponders, Drivewyze can identify trucks with more than 99 percent accuracy even when they are two miles from a weigh station. And unlike transponder-based services, which use open radio protocols, Drivewyze communications are secure and encrypted. Private fleet and driver data is never shared.”
Drivewyze directly accesses federal and state databases in real-time to identify the truck and carrier and determine whether the carrier meets the state’s screening criteria. Only if it meets the criteria does Drivewyze grant a bypass. Because Drivewyze accesses the same information state law enforcement officers and commercial vehicle inspectors use, the data is always up-to-date, he said. This is an important distinction. Unlike transponder-based systems, which rely on weeks-old data to determine eligibility, Drivewyze accesses only the latest information.
“Carriers whose safety scores improve may have to wait up to a month to see an increase in their number of bypasses, using the transponder based bypass service,” Heath added. “With Drivewyze, their bypass rates would improve immediately. Transponder-based systems can also have a much lower identification accuracy rate because drivers must drive their trucks directly under the transponder readers to get accurate readings,” Heath said.
With a higher likelihood of successfully transmitting a bypass request through the same cellular networks that deliver mobile calls and data, Drivewyze maintains a high accuracy rate in identification - over 99 percent, he said.
The addition of Drivewyze will also help South Carolina’s commercial vehicle inspection officers become more efficient at identifying carriers whose safety records warrant the additional scrutiny, Heath said. As a result, they’ll be better able to deal with ever-increasing truck freight traffic, especially along U.S. Highway 17 and I-26 – the major transportation routes leading to the Port of Charleston. Traffic along these routes is expected to increase substantially after the Port of Charleston’s harbor deepening project is completed in 2019. Two permanent weigh stations on I-26 and three mobile sites on US. Highway 17 now offer Drivewyze bypass service. According to “Charting a Course to 2040,” a multimodal transportation and statewide freight plan, South Carolina expects freight tonnage moved by truck to almost double from about 300 million in 2011 to nearly 575 million by 2040.
The Drivewyze PreClear weigh station bypass application comes pre-loaded on in-cab telematics and ELD devices by Omnitracs, PeopleNet, Rand McNally and Zonar. Fleets can turn on a free analytics weigh station loss reporting tool to help them determine how much Drivewyze can potentially save them before activating the subscription-based weigh station bypass service. The application is also available for Android and iOS-based tablets or smartphones.
Drivewyze, which comes with a Weigh Station Heads-Up service for real-time notifications for more than 1,200 weigh stations and inspection sites nationwide, provides bypass opportunities at more than 600 sites in 38 states. To learn more about Drivewyze, please visit www.drivewyze.com.
