BigRoad plans 395.15 compliant e-log, integrates with Sylectus

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You can download BigRoad for the iPhone and Android by following those links to the iTunes and Google Play app stores.You can download BigRoad for the iPhone and Android by following those links to the iTunes and Google Play app stores.

BigRoad, the well-known smartphone-based logging app and affordable business-management platform, has unveiled new integration capabilities with the Sylectus trucking management software and expedited collaborative trucking-business network. 

In an interview with Overdrive conducted within the last month, BigRoad COO and cofounder Terry Frey noted that the company was hard at work on a connection to truck electronic control module — with a Bluetooth connection to drivers’ smartphones where logs are input — that will turn the BigRoad logging solution into a 395.15-compliant automatic on-board recording device (AOBRD) and set the stage for satisfying the ELD mandate with BigRoad, should it arrive. “Without getting into specifics” relative to e-log pricing, Frey said, the company’s goal is to be “the most cost-effective solution in the market.”

Frey also touted the current, free logging app for drivers and attendant management software for owner-operators and fleets as a viable way in itself to greatly reduce the most prevalent category of log violation, form and manner. “We’ve helped turn around many fleets with that,” he says, with the average-size carrier among BigRoad clients being in the seven-or-so-driver/truck range. Some small fleets, after implementing the app, he added, “took their safety score [in the Hours of Service Compliance category under CSA] from about 80 percent to close to perfect over 12 months.” 

Today, however, in order to truly be compliant using the BigRoad app, as with other logging apps, drivers must have a printer on-board to provide paper evidence to law enforcement should they request it; as many drivers know, the numbers of officers doing so has been falling. Frey: “That being said, many of our fleets have been saying, ‘We don’t want our guys to carry a printer — we want the engine connected.'”

Frey gave a rough timetable of end of summer for such a solution’s availability.  

Sylectus integration
The integration with Sylectus’ TMS allows drivers using BigRoad’s editable electronic driver log and the Sylectus mobile application to capture duty status changes and send trip updates (arrive, load, empty) and paperwork back to the TMS — all from one smartphone or tablet. Fleets can then use the BigRoad/Sylectus integrated solution to track a driver’s location and available HOS in real time. 

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“Drivers and fleets want productivity and ease of use,” Frey said. “They also want the tools that run their business to work together seamlessly to produce results and ease the compliance burden. For all of these reasons, we have chosen to take a very open approach to the market, integrating with critical fleet technologies, such as the Sylectus TMS through our BigRoad API.”

Sylectus General Manager Stuart Sutton notes “the integration with the BigRoad app offers our customers a more interactive way to dispatch and track drivers and monitor their active HOS data in real time. Dynamic information exchange between BigRoad and Sylectus TMS enables fleets to better comply with FMCSA regulations and improves dispatchers’ ability to help their drivers adhere to HOS rules.” 

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