TRUCK CLEARANCE HELP

TRUCK CLEARANCE

HELP’s PrePass takes off

HELP Inc, the leading US provider of electronic (e-) clearance services for weigh station bypass, reports that over 40,000 heavy trucks in the US were equipped with its transponders by end March compared to 20,000 in November 1966 and fewer than 4,000 this time last year. 350 trucking companies are now involved.

Richard P Landis, president of HELP Inc told us his operation “has really taken off” in the past six months and that prospects now look good for continuing to add large numbers of trucks and to build the network beyond the southwest corner and into the center of the US. He says HELP will progressively offer new services, such as one-stop credentials applications, border crossing services, yard control and fleet management for trucking companies and toll payment. The HELP executive says that a standard for vehicle-to-roadside (VRC) communications is a “non-issue.” Claims that the truck program is being held back by the slow pace of standardization (see TR#13 Mar 97 p6) are untrue, he told us.

“Look we have a standard. The truckers are not holding back. They love this equipment and they are installing it. The equipment works well and it is being adopted by others. The marketplace has established a standard. There aren’t any problems of interoperability that we cannot solve.” Landis told us.

ASTMv6 used: The HELP equipment uses a 915MHz TDMA (time division multiple access) active transponder in the truck cab and gantry-mounted readers manufactured by Hughes Transp Management Systems to a standard known as ASTMv6 (the system being used for toll collection on H-407 and similar in some respects to the Mark IV e-toll system adopted throughout the mid-Atlantic states.) HELP Inc’s major service marketed as PrePass allows trucks to be weighed electronically at highway speeds in the mainline and checked for compliance with state-required truck credentials. As a driver approaches a PrePass-equipped weight & inspection station, the transponder inside the truck’s cab identifies the vehicle to the weigh station computer, which checks it against state-required operating, safety and registration credentials. A high-speed weigh-in-motion system embedded in the roadway ahead of the pulloff to the inspection station weighs, counts and measures the distance between axles, calculates total vehicle gross and axle weight. If all is OK the driver gets a green light on his transponder to bypass the station, but if some inspection or checking is needed the truck is called in with a red light. HELP only current revenue is a 99c fee paid each time the truck gets ‘green’ for a bypass, since transponders are supplied free.

HELP currently operates 14 electronic clearance stations — 10 in California and 4 in New Mexico. Four more are currently being installed in Arizona. HELP said in its last annual report it would have 30 sites on line by the end of 1997. Landis told us he has Wyoming lined up for several e-clearance sites and is negotiating with Colorado and is hopeful of early action in Missouri too. Nevada will incorporate HELP facilities in its mobile weigh and inspection systems, a course that might be followed later with Texas, which has no fixed installations.

Banished from Oregon: Landis’ biggest setback was a falling out with the state of Oregon which decided last year to have no further dealings with HELP, making it impossible to offer services right down I-5 on the west coast. But Oregon is working with Utah (a HELP member) on a program that uses similar equipment to HELP. The major obstacle that Landis sees to nationwide deployment is Advantage I-75, a test program Detroit-Atlanta-Miami paid for by the federal government.

“It is time for the government to get out of the way,” says Landis of that program, which has 5,000 transponders in trucks for free, an arrangement that undercuts any commercial service! The three major systems (HELP, GREENLIGHTS and ADVANTAGE) are at least all moving toward interoperable equipment, so it will be technically possible to tie them together if the government ceases its subsidies, Landis says, and if clearing house arrangements are made. A commercial beneficiary of this success has been Hughes TMS which has made major deliveries to all the truck e-clearance systems. Hughes marketing manager Loren Jonkey told us: “This has provided us with very solid and healthily growing business lately.”

HELP Inc was formed in 1993 as a 501(c)3 non-profit company based in Phoeniz AZ with a mix of state DoTs (AZ, CA, NV, NM, WA, MT, UT, MN, CO, TX, WY) and trucking associations as members, but it is closely associated with Lockheed Martin IMS. Lockheed is the systems integrator, operator and major marketer and financier for HELP Inc. Landis says the operation is nowhere near breaking even yet and calls Lockheed his “venture capital partner.” Terry Lynam of Lockheed declined to say precisely how much the company has put into HELP but said it was a “multi-million dollar amount” and constituted most of HELP’s funding. (Richard Landis HELP 602 254 2708, Terry Lynam, Lockheed 201 996 7052 www.prepass.com)

Late addition: Linden Lundberg, sales manager for PrePass at Lockheed told us there’s now the possibility of 45 HELP sites being up by year’s end and 80,000 trucks equipped — with an eventual market nationwide of perhaps half a million. He said there’s a very optimistic attitude toward the project within the company as well as strong interest among potential customers.