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If you’ve driven on an interstate or highway, odds are you’ve encountered a weigh station. These stations are run by the Department of Transportation or state highway patrol and are used to weigh and inspect commercial motor vehicles that weigh over 10,000 pounds.
Although these inspections are important, they can often take a lot of time out of a truck driver’s day.
As every truck driver knows, time is a precious resource, and every minute drivers spend stopped at a weigh station cuts down on how many miles they can travel that day and impacts their ability to deliver freight on time.
That’s why companies like Drivewyze are working to create an electric-inspection process that helps drivers by eliminating the need to stop at weigh stations.
How Drivewyze’s e-inspection technology works
The Drivewyze app alerts drivers via their tablet when they are a few miles away from a weigh station. The app then tells the driver whether that station is a Drivewyze site and tells the driver if they can bypass the weigh station or if they have to stop.
Drivers are able to bypass the weight station because the e-inspection technology does the following:
- Allows officers to digitally screen the vehicle and carrier information.
- Screens driver data automatically against multiple systems (all at once) for compliance issues.
- Gives officers the freedom to validate data or focus on non-electronic elements of an inspection.
With e-inspections, officers conducting inspections can view vehicle, carrier and driver-level information electronically while the vehicle is still in motion.
In addition, inspection forms are automatically pre-filled at the start of each inspection, avoiding time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry.
Schneider driver demonstrates Drivewyze
Schneider Operations Support Representative (OSR) Tavares McIntosh recently demonstrated Drivewyze’s e-inspection technology for convention attendees, state law enforcement and national fleets at the 2021 Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) conference.
Tavares has been a Schneider driver for almost five years, starting out his driving career as a Dedicated driver before transitioning to Intermodal driving and becoming a Training Engineer and OSR.
In his presentation, Tavares demonstrated how automated electronic roadside inspections can save time and money, while improving highway safety.
“It was a great experience being selected to demonstrate this new technology on behalf of Schneider,” Tavares said. “It definitely makes the inspection process faster and lets drivers do more of what they do – drive.”
The future of e-inspections
Currently only five states are rolling out e-inspections – Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, Virginia and Michigan – but many more plan to follow in the future as state agency software is upgraded to process e-inspections.
