E-ticketing, an electronic means of producing individual scale tickets and providing material haul summaries for state-funded roadway projects, continues to evolve and gain traction among state highway transportation officials and HMA contractors.  

Fleetwatcher customers across the country are raving about the ease-of-use of our new ELD application that was rolled out earlier this year to comply with the new mandate for electronic logs issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).  The new mandate goes into effect next month on December 18, 2017.  

Earthwave customer, Barriere Construction, was recently featured in Asphalt Contractor magazine. Barriere is on the leading edge of utilizing technology in the field. Click here to see the full article (pages 16-18). 

A revolutionary new materials delivery solution developed by Earthwave Technologies for the asphalt paving industry has garnered the attention of Department of Transportation officials for its potential to replace paper tickets with accurate and verifiable electronic tickets that provide the proper documentation for deliveries to highway and road-building projects.

Utah’s Department of Transportation is hosting a workshop on e-construction on March 1-2 in Salt Lake City to cover the latest progress reports from leading states. A presentation by Greg Mulder, Director of Iowa DOT Office of Construction and Materials, will highlight Iowa’s use of e-tickets and e-document submittal using Fleetwatcher’s Materials Delivery Solution in 2015.

Initially developed for paving contractors to help reduce trucking costs and optimize cycle times, the solution was embraced by Mulder and his team as viable technology to replace paper tickets following a successful 90-day ‘proof of concept’ of the system with a local contractor in Ames IA. The solution and process worked very well for tracking and verifying the product life cycle from the certified plant to installation.



The following article first appeared on 12/17/15 in Transportation Matters, an IowaDOT publication. Click Here to see how Fleetwatcher's Material Delivery Solution can be used to Optimize Cycle Times, Reduce Trucking Costs, and Improve Paving Operations. 

ETICKETING SHOWS PROMISE OF SPEEDING PROCESS AND IMPROVING ACCURACY AT ASPHALT JOB SITES

It seems that most everything is going electronic these days, and for good reason. Going paperless can improve business operations and decrease the amount of resources needed to get the job done. In the highway construction industry, electronic lettings have been standard operating procedure for the Iowa Department of Transportation for years. More recently, the e-Construction process removed time-consuming paper shuffling right up to the point where the asphalt truck arrives at a job site to unload.

“That’s where we’ve hit a snag in the electronic process,” said Greg Mulder, director of the Iowa DOT’s Office of Construction and Materials. “Each truck driver still carries a paper load-out ticket that is collected by the Iowa DOT inspector on the jobsite and used to document the details of the delivery.”

Working with Manatts Inc.’s Ames office, Mulder and his staff recently piloted a “proof of concept” project and developed what they think could be the next step in a paperless, efficient process for documenting asphalt deliveries to highway construction projects.
 

Repeat Job Provides Comparison Data and $60,000 to the Bottom Line!

When the management at Gallagher Asphalt made the decision to purchase Fleetwatcher, they expected immediate results. So when a "repeat" paving job was kicked-off, management knew this would be an opportunity for a good comparison.

"Each year, a village near Chicago paves several roads, typically taking 5-6 weeks to complete. We did this job last year and were doing what was essentially the same job this year - same number of streets, same mix, same distance, same bid. The only difference was having Fleetwatcher installed," says Jonkman. 

The result? Last year, Gallagher finished the job $60,000 over budget on trucking costs. This year, the company finished $500 under budget!

Comparing FleetWatcher to OEM Telematics Systems

Many construction companies are using the GPS systems that were installed on the equipment by the Original Equipment Manufacturer's (OEM's). While those systems can produce some useful data, our customers have found that there are reasons why fleet owners benefit from a third-party system such as Fleetwatcher. 

You Know It Idles, But How Much Does It Idle??

As we talk with construction companies from across the country, most don't know how much their equipment idles. Some have an idea that their equipment idles too much. Others don't even suspect that idle is a problem for them. However, in 15 years of working in the industry and gathering company data, we see that most companies have idle times across their fleets that average above 50%. 

IMPROVE FLEET MANAGEMENT TO INCREASE PROFITS
Today the construction industry is in essentially the same place as the U.S. manufacturing industry was in the early 1990s - trapped between the declining margins of a competitive environment and a lack of the efficient processes needed to grow. In the early 1990s, manufacturing used the same basic methods and processes for planning, tracking, producing, shipping and selling products that had been in place since the 1960s. Paper and human reporting were everywhere. Critical data arrived to decision makers desks too late to be useful. Operational control was more black magic than science, and communications was glacially slow.