5 Requirements to Tame Toll

Welcome to today’s, to today’s webinar, five Requirements, detained Toll,

presented by Bestpass. I’m David Cullen, business Washington,

editor for Heavy Duty Trucking, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s event.

I encourage you to ask questions during the webinar at any point,

and we’ll try to address them all. However, if we do not get to yours,

don’t worry. You’ll be contacted by email with a response after the event.

I’m joined today by our speakers, Cindy ERs,

chief Customer Officer at Bestpass, and Brent Ellis,

vice President of Business Systems and Processes at Decker Truck Line.

Thank you both for being here.

I’d like to kick things off by learning a a bit more about, about you,

about each of you. Uh, Cindy, do you wanna, uh, jump in first?

Sure thing. Uh, thanks David. So, I’m, I’m Cindy Ss,

oh, I’m getting a little bit of an echo. Um,

I’m Cindy s I joined Bestpass back in, uh, 2021,

um, and I focus, uh,

the majority of my time working with customers on how to optimize their,

their toll program, uh, and oversee operations at Bestpass.

Thanks all for joining today,

And Brent, I’ll throw it over to you.

I’m Brent Ellis. Um, I’ve been in, in the transportation industry, uh,

30 years now. Um, I guess I just, just dated myself,

but, um, uh,

I’m vice President of Business Systems and Process here at Decker. Um,

we run, uh, we run a fleet of flatbed and reefer, uh,

reefer units, about 750 trucks, uh,

about 40% flatbed, the rest reefer. Um,

I oversee all of our software programs, uh, as well as integrations,

uh, vendor relations and, and everything related.

Glad to be here.

Thank you, Brent. And so we’ll start with our, with our, um,

next slide on what the problem is that, that, that’s being addressed today,

which is amounts to budget pressor. Budget pressures, excuse me.

And so I want to start, start off here by asking Brent,

what kind of budget impacts is Deck Decker Trucking,

Decker truck line, seeing, uh, you know,

that could be everything from insurance to fuel costs. Uh, Brett,

your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think, uh, across the board we’ve seen an increase in everything. Uh,

like you mentioned, from, from insurance to fuel, uh, maintenance, um,

you know, truck parts, uh, tires, fuel, uh, any,

anything that touches the operation. There’s been an increase, uh,

in the last year and a half or so. And it, it continues to, to increase. Um,

you know, obviously, uh, anything you can do to, uh, to save money in any,

any area is huge. Um, tolls are a,

are a huge expense, uh, across the industry, not just for us here at Decker,

but, uh, you know, any, anything with wheels on it fills the,

the effects of tolls. So, uh, but in the trucking industry, it’s,

it’s huge because there are so many trucks out there.

That’s right. Sounds like it’s an all about working smarter than ever. Uh,

given the co current cost pressures and, uh, um, Cindy,

what kinds of toll savings could you,

could a fleet realize through better toll management?

Yeah, I think, uh, there’s, there’s a lot of savings to be had. Uh, and I know,

uh, Brent, while we were talking about this, this webinar last week,

um, you, you made a,

a mention of savings over at Decker of eight to 9%. Uh,

since coming over to Bestpass, I think, you know, through talking with,

with customers, if they’re coming to us from paying cash, uh,

or doing it on their own, there’s huge savings to be had, 20% plus,

depending on, on prior situation. Uh, if,

if there’s another provider at play, we’ve seen, you know,

anywhere from seven to 10%, which may be percentage, uh,

wise doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but, um,

just taking a look at our customer base,

the average a thousand truck fleet that we serve is spending just around

$2 million in toll. So that adds up pretty quickly. As Brent mentioned, it’s,

um, definitely a growing expense as well. Uh, so, you know,

if you’re looking at, at $2 million in 10% of that,

that’s $200,000 of savings over the course of the year,

which can be a meaningful pocket of savings for sure.

And, uh, Brent, can you,

can you speak to your average toll spend there at, at Decker, especially,

you know, in terms of your fleet size ice?

We were, we were fairly close to, uh, to the numbers that,

that Cindy had there we’re probably at, uh, about a million and a half, maybe,

maybe 1.7. Um, we have a lot of repetitive,

repetitive business in particular lanes that are, are toll heavy. Um,

so for that reason, we, we probably are a little above average. Um,

but as Cindy mentioned, you know, we, we transferred from another,

another provider to Bestpass about, uh, almost two years ago.

And, uh, and even having, you know, having been with another provider for a,

a significant amount of time, uh, we did, we did see an eight to 9%,

uh, savings right off the bat. Uh, and a lot of that, we’ll,

we’ll get to the reasons why later, I’m sure. But, uh, but we did see, you know,

having, having been with a toll management provider, we did still see savings.

And I know that, uh, from past experience,

obviously I haven’t been with Deckler my entire career.

And from past experience, the, the numbers that Cindy put out there for, uh,

Metro, a fleet that doesn’t use a toll management provider, you know,

the 20% range is not, uh, is not uncommon to see,

um, because it is such a, such a huge expense and,

and such a vast network of providers that we deal with that things that through

the cracks. So it’s, uh, it’s definitely been a good move for us, and,

and I would recommend any fleet that’s not using a toll management service to

take a look at it.

Okay. And Cindy, uh, does that track with, uh,

what you’re seeing from other customers, uh, especially that difference between,

uh, not just switching from one established provider to another, uh,

but going from, uh,

in-house toll collection to using a service like Bestpass?

Yeah, for sure it does. Um, and I think, you know, those,

especially larger fleets, uh, without toll management,

uh, and I think we’ll talk a little bit about this later on as well,

but it’s just, uh, really, really challenging to manage effectively,

um, on your own. And so some of that savings just comes from the,

the ease of making sure updates happen on time, uh, et cetera.

Okay. And, and Brent, uh, looking beyond the cost savings,

were there ever, were there other benefits that you’re looking for, um,

you know, from, from your prior toll provider and, and now, now, uh,

from Bestpass?

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, one of the, one of the leading factors that,

that caused us to start looking for other providers was, uh, the fact that our,

our previous provider was not able to, uh,

to integrate with our E L D system to pull, uh,

g P s information, you know, the lat long and, and, uh, all that from the,

the new g the new, uh, e l D provider. Um,

we didn’t have any sort of integration between our t m s and their system,

um, which was also, it, it wasn’t necessarily a requirement, but,

but it was definitely a nice to have. Um, and early on, I,

I brought that up with Bestpass and, uh, at the time they had a, an a p i that,

uh, that we’ve used to, uh, to integrate.

And we’ll probably get into that more a little later too. But, um,

best Bestpass has definitely become more of a partner than a vendor.

Um, and that’s, that’s what I look for in a vendor relationship is,

you know, obviously first, first line is, do they,

are they able to provide the service that we’re looking for?

And they definitely check that box. But, um, you know, the relationship itself,

we don’t, we don’t necessarily wanna be just another account or just, uh,

you know, uh, just another invoice that gets sent. Uh,

you know, if there’s an issue, obviously we wanna be heard, but we,

we definitely wanna partner with vendors and,

and from both sides work to improve, uh, you know,

improve the service and improve integrations or whatever the case may be.

So all those kind of factored into the decision to,

to start looking and definitely, uh, best pass, checked all the boxes, so.

Right. And I, that, that makes perfect sense. So moving on to our next slide,

where we can see, uh, in those bullet points, how,

how vast an enterprise tolling is with,

with it being conducted at hundreds of facilities and, and, uh,

through 125 different tolling agencies. Uh, so with,

with that in mind, um, uh, uh, Brett,

how many states does Decker operate in? And,

and by that I mean,

really how many eight tolling agencies would you be interacting with?

We are in, we’re in all 48 states, so we would be interacting with, with all,

you know, all of the tolling agencies. Um,

and that was the reason that initially, uh,

pre pre me, uh, that they had partnered with a, another,

another provider. Um, but yeah, it,

it would be a massive undertaking.

And I’ve worked with carriers in the past where, you know, maybe we only had,

uh, a dozen states that were affected by tolls that, uh,

we didn’t use a total management system, and it was a nightmare. Um,

you know, at, at one point, you, we talked about the savings early on,

but what we,

what we don’t figure into that really is the overhead involved in managing.

Uh, because there, again, with a,

a company I was with where we covered 12 states that had tolls,

we had three full-time employees just to manage that. Um, you know, granted,

we didn’t, uh, we didn’t look to terminate those people,

but there are always other positions they can fill.

There’s always something to be done. Um, you know, and in that,

in that particular instance, uh, when we went with the toll management service,

uh, we were able to repurpose those people through their other positions. And,

uh, you know, you still have the overhead expense,

but there’s much more benefit to it because they’re,

they’re filling spots and taking care of things that are maybe slipping through

the cracks or, or not getting the attention they need. Uh,

and tolls are kind of taking care of themselves. So, um,

so there’s definitely a, a huge savings in that regard too.

And also, uh, the, the sheer mass of what’s, uh, a best,

best pass can provide in terms of data analysis and actionable

intelligence. Does that touch on things like, uh, being, being able to, um,

do routing based on toll tolls more efficiently, uh,

and also maybe finding not just the most toll efficient route,

but also the most fuel efficient route?

Yeah, absolutely. We use a, a fuel fuel optimization program that, uh,

it takes tolls into account, um, as well as, you know,

fuel costs and hours of service and every,

every possible factor that can affect, uh, you know, a driver and a load, um,

be that on time delivery or, or any of the above, even down to the,

the average wait time at a particular fuel stock. Uh, and having that,

that almost real time data, you know, at least up to date data, um,

related to tolls on a particular route, is huge. Uh, because this,

the system that we use can look at, uh,

it’ll look at a particular load and a particular driver, um, and determine,

uh, here’s the most fuel efficient route. Uh, it does take the toll in,

into consideration if Route A has a, a $90 toll, um,

and fuel is, you know, 10 cents a gallon cheaper on that route, uh,

it actually has the algorithm to determine, okay, well,

if they take Route P where there’s not a toll,

but fuel is 10 cents more a gallon, um, you know, over the,

the course of the load,

it’s more fuel efficient or more efficient overall and less costly, um,

to take the route with the toll or to take the route without. Um, so it’s,

it doesn’t just touch toll management. It touches multiple,

multiple segments of the business. Um, you know, we’re able to pull in,

pull in data from Bestpass using their A P I, uh,

which has recently been revamped, and we are, uh, we’re excited about that.

We are, uh, we’re about to rip the lid off of that and see what else we can do.

But, uh, you know, we’re able to pull in UpToDate data. Uh,

we’re able to tie the toll expenses directly to a load rather than it just being

a, a cost of doing business. Uh,

so we can look at particular lanes and determine, you know, is it,

is it more profitable? You know, is it less profitable with the toll? Is it,

is this something we need to go back to the customer and negotiate the,

the toll cost on this lane? Or, uh, things of that nature. So it’s, uh,

it’s multifaceted in what it does for us and, and the ability to see that data,

you know, and be able to tie it directly to an order. Um, so there,

there are multiple benefits outside of just not having to demand it.

And Cindy, could you, uh, would you like to add, uh, any more thoughts on, uh,

the difficulties,

the difficulties that arise when a fleet has to work with many different tolling

authorities?

Yes. Um, I’ve got lots of thoughts there, uh,

but I’ll work to keep them concise today.

’cause I know we only have a short time. Uh, so Brent mentioned a,

a couple things. So, so one, um, he mentioned having,

having three full-time folks working on toll in, in a past business.

And I think, uh, while some larger fleets definitely have that,

uh, in place, uh, that’s not super typical.

I think what we often see is,

is the responsibilities for toll are very decentralized often in, uh,

departments where, uh, they’ve just gotten more important things to focus on.

Uh, we’ve seen it fall in safety, uh, finance tax, and,

and really we just find, um, that pre-hab a a toll management solution in place.

It’s just a huge distraction, uh, from focusing on things that are,

are more relevant to, uh, improving and, and, um,

yeah, I guess improving is, is probably the best word here. Their,

their core business, right? Uh, driving more revenue for their business and,

and doing more and better for, for their customers, uh,

whether they’re transportation by, um,

by, uh, trade or doing something else. And,

and transportation becomes a byproduct of that. Uh, and I think, you know, on,

on the overhead piece, so we’ve got on here, you know, 38 states,

340 facilities, 125 tolling agencies. Uh, we all know that, you know,

there are hubs out there, right?

You’ve got the EZPass hub and the central states hub with Kansas, uh, Texas,

Oklahoma. Um, and even with those hubs,

uh, if somebody’s traveling coast to coast or or transporting coast to coast,

there are over 10 different agency groups that a fleet would,

would have to work with in order to manage Toll.

And so the overhead on that is just, uh,

it’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of time. Um,

and there’s a lot of room for error because, um, these,

these tolling agencies are, they do great work, uh,

but they’re meant for two cars in a driveway, not, uh, huge fleets, right? Um,

and so a lot of the, the interaction with their websites and,

and everything is very manual. Um,

and so when you’re talking about uploading a thousand vehicles and keeping that

updated day after day, week after week, um, ordering devices,

making payments to all of those places is just a huge, uh,

amount of time that has to be spent to do it right. Um,

versus having sort of a centralized platform to load that data, um,

and as Brent’s done, you know, integrate that data in, uh, and then be able to,

to pull data out, um, so that it becomes, you know,

something that you don’t,

you don’t have to spend days and nights worrying about, um,

or anyone’s full-time job. It’s, it’s just, you know, off to the side. And,

and for sure, you know, as Brent mentioned, we,

we wanna partner with our customers.

We do partner with our customers to optimize their programs and,

and share guidance and best practice. And, uh, I really like to think of,

of it as, as we’re worrying about toll and kind of staying on,

on the cutting edge of what’s changing in that industry, uh,

so that our customers don’t have to worry about it, and,

and they can really spend their time and effort, uh, focusing on,

on their core business.

Thanks, Cindy. And let’s, uh, let’s move on to the,

the five requirements themselves, uh, to, um, help, um,

better manage toll spending. And the first is note, knowing the why,

which we have up there, uh,

which I think suggests that toll management is a complicated task for fleet to

carry out. And, uh, and also to,

to gain insights about toll spending from their strictly, uh,

fleet perspective. And so, uh, Brent, what, what issue is,

what issues was Decker experiencing, uh, due,

due to a lack of insight into your toll spend, uh, the lack of,

a lack of, uh, data you could act upon?

Well, actually we had, uh, we had issues with all three of these on the slide.

Uh, you know, our, ours was a, an extremely manual process with the,

the previous provider where, uh, we had the,

the one person who managed the,

the provider account actually would, uh, keep a spreadsheet outside of our,

of our system and outside of our database, um, where, you know,

tractor number and all the information that went with it was,

was on the spreadsheet. Uh,

they would manually enter the transponder number in the, uh, in the spreadsheet,

then go to the website, log in, do all the same, same thing over there and,

and back and forth. Um, and we were able to, as I mentioned earlier,

use the A p I and, uh, now we use a, a central database,

you know, all of our, all of our terminals use the same T M SS system,

and they’re all, you know, tied into one database. Um,

so now that person goes into the, the master file in the system, uh,

for that particular tractor, um, assigns the transponder number,

and we use the a p i at that point to push all that data over the Bestpass and

update the, the, the hub, the portal. And then at that point, once we,

uh, you know, for some reason we remove the, the transponder,

if we’re we’re taking the tractor outta service,

or if the off chance that the transponder goes bad and has to be replaced,

all they do is go in and remove that transponder, add the new one, and it,

it updates Bestpass. So that’s, that’s the thing of the past,

that’s that ugly spreadsheet went away. Um,

but as far as the toll data itself, like I mentioned,

tolls had always been just kind of a, a lump sum at the end of the month.

Here’s what was spent,

and it was kinda looked at as a cost of doing business rather than, uh,

looking at it at the individual load level. Um, and now, you know,

we’re able to, uh, we’re able to see not only at the load level, but we can,

we can break that down and look at individual lanes, um, you know,

high volume lanes especially to see what toll spend is in those. And, um,

you know, if that’s increased or decreased, um, outside of volume. But if the,

you know, just the rate has increased, uh, then, you know,

we make the determination. Do we go back to the customer and,

and have a conversation about it or, or, um, you know, is it,

is it okay where it is, uh,

and do we talk to the customer about billing toll individually?

Do we pad the rate? Um, but it’s given us a, a ton of insight, um,

at the load level to know what the spend is. Um, you know,

and then of course, the added benefit of having that data available, um,

for our fuel optimization system, uh, that it can, you know,

it can make use of it as well to determine, uh, more fuel efficient,

not cost efficient routes, not just fuel efficient, but, um,

weighing that against the, uh, uh, the total cost and, and,

you know, is it, is it cheaper to pay the toll and pay more for,

or pay less for fuel,

or is it cheaper to pay more for fuel and not pay the toll? So, uh,

it’s, it’s, again, it’s hitting multi multiple facets of the business. And,

uh, I just, I can’t say enough good things about toll management,

especially best pass and how they do it.

Alright. And Cindy, uh, any other challenges your customers are facing in,

in this, uh, in this realm?

Yeah, so I think, um, and, and this sort of echoes what, what Brett had shared.

I think one of the biggest challenges, uh, is not only, you know, so there’s,

there’s these 10 plus agency groups out there, and, um,

not only is it sort of a hassle to upload the data,

but also downloading the data, right? So all of the toll costs, um,

many of our many customers pre, uh, coming to us,

if they’re working directly with agencies,

they’ve got reformat the data in order to consolidate it.

’cause it all comes in in different formats, right? Um, and then beyond that,

and that’s just to get the holistic view of the spend. So Brent,

sort of lump sum end of the month, um, cost of doing business, right?

But properly allocating those costs. And, um, I’ll share Brent, uh,

and, and Deck are quite sophisticated in the use, uh,

and I’m seeing more and more customers, uh,

heading in that direction. Um, but even, you know, a,

a step before sort of getting, uh, toll costs allocated to loads, uh,

many of our customers are, are using, uh,

what we call cost centers to be able to bill back toll charges to different

business units or end customers. And that just is so, so much work. Um,

if you’re,

you’re having to download all of the data from lots of different agency sites,

uh, it’s also really important that, you know, as the toll costs are,

are sort of accruing that, that those are coming back to fleets in, uh,

a timely manner. Uh, and we’re able to get, uh, data quite quickly,

um, through our integrations with, with tolling providers. Um,

usually there, there are two scenarios, right? Some, uh,

some fleets we find are billing estimates of toll costs, um,

or including them in the, the prices of loads, but others are, are billing, um,

based on their, their customer contracts after the loads happened.

And there’s only a certain window when you do it that way,

where you can bill back things like toll costs and, um, with any delays in,

in transactions or, um, time spent sort of allocating the costs manually.

If you don’t have a good system to do it, um, you’re,

you’re eating through that,

that window and potentially missing the window to be able to,

to build those costs back. Um, and for sure, it’s really difficult, uh,

to look at like specific lanes and consider whether to adjust, uh,

load prices to account for rising toll costs as well without sort of a

centralized system. If,

if you’re spending all of your time collecting and consolidating the data versus

analyzing it and, and using it, uh, more strategically, then,

then that can really quickly eat away at, at the bottom line.

Alright, thanks. Thanks, Cindy. And moving, moving to, uh,

number two requirement.

That’s really the recognition that toll management takes time. Uh,

fleets can spend up to a hundred hours a month managing tolls. Now, given that,

uh, Brent, what, what challenges has Decker faced, uh,

in terms in terms of auditing and reconciling invoices? That’s our,

our first bullet point up there.

Well, again, we were,

we were another provider when we made the move to Bestpass.

But speaking from a previous life, like I mentioned, we had,

we had three full-time employees, um, that, that was,

that was their primary purpose was to, uh, audit,

reconcile invoices, uh, take position data, you know, in,

in questionable situations. And, and there again, um,

what’s questionable when you’re doing it manually, you know, and if,

if we had something that really stood out, uh, they would dig into it to see,

you know, for example, uh, this same lane, you know, we had,

we had five tolls, um,

in this particular time period that were X amount,

but then we’ve got this one in the same, same,

it was on the same exact same lane, exact same load,

but it was twice as much as the others. Uh, so you have to go in and, and pull,

uh, position data to see where, you know,

where the truck entered the toll, where it left the, the toll area. Um,

and then you have to go back and dispute that with the provider and the,

and all that. And it’s just, it’s extremely time consuming.

It’s extremely tedious work. Um, and there’s a point also,

you know, where you, you kinda have to determine where that the,

the point of diminishing return is where, you know,

we’re stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime,

we’re spending five hours to recoup, you know, $15 and it’s not worth it.

Uh,

And then, you know, with a, with a toll management provider, uh,

we don’t look at any of that. Um, they take care of that for us.

They’re on the ball and they, they pull the data from our, our,

all of our position data from our e l D provider. And, um, you know,

they compare that. I don’t know how they do it.

They may have a room full of 2 million people to do it, I don’t know.

But all I know is that it gets done, and that’s all I want to know. Um, and,

and that we are not the ones doing it. Um, so it is,

it’s huge in that regard because like I said, that was a,

a fairly small fleet and, uh, again,

we only dealt with with 12 states, but, uh, the, the three,

three full-time employees was enough to, to cause us to look toward a,

a provider.

We haven’t quite hit the 2 million employee mark.

Um, yeah, and, and I’ll add onto that. ’cause I think, uh, Brent, you,

you made a really good point about, um, you know, it’s,

I think especially disputing charges, like Max told charges,

and we’ll talk a little bit about this later,

but disputing max toll charges and violations, um, the,

the room for error in, in manual vehicle upload. I think, uh,

I can’t talk about vehicle uploads enough and having a clean vehicle list when

it comes to toll, because if you don’t have the plates on file,

you’re getting paper, uh, and paper just always is gonna take so much more time.

Uh, and I know, you know, on a future slide, I think we, we bring up, uh,

violations, but, um,

having one place to add all of your vehicles and manage all of your

transponders, so you’ve got the right devices in the right places,

is gonna tend to reduce violations by, you know, 80 plus percent.

Um,

and disputing and paying violations is often one of the most time

consuming parts of, of toll management. And it’s,

it’s just really challenging to kind of stay on top of it all when you’re

sending data and pulling data from so many different places that, you know,

you don’t have time to think about forecasting future costs and managing

spend by adjusting load prices or, or, um,

leveraging toll toll rates for route optimization. Um,

you’re spending all your time consolidating the data and,

and hoping that you’re not making manual errors as you’re keeping things up to

date with, with each individual provider.

Thanks, Cindy. And, uh, we’ll head over to number three, the third requirement,

if you will, which is, uh, you know, you want to avoid, uh,

failure at managing your toll spend, uh,

because tolling is actually more than just paying tolls. And Cindy,

could you, could you speak to that, uh,

how all these other fees get rolled into, uh, into toll costs?

Yeah, sure. So, um, I think we,

we talked about the, the time and importance of,

of having vehicles up to date and,

and the result of not doing that well is really violations, uh,

late payment fees that generally come from violations,

collections fees from violations, uh, you probably see a common theme. Um,

we’ve had customers just, uh,

to understand sort of how significant a, a challenge this is. Uh,

we’ll have some, some larger customers come in and, uh,

we will see, you know, $50,000 worth of like dated toll,

um, as we’re, we’re helping them kind of settle out, settle things out, uh,

as they transition to, to working with us. And we’ll see, you know,

recent customer, $50,000 in outstanding toll, um,

$400,000 in administrative fees, uh, on those violations.

So, um, the fees, just the, the, the toll’s bad enough, right?

If you’re not managing it well, uh, it can certainly eat into margins. Uh,

the fees that go alongside violations can, can make loads change from,

from profitable to not, right? Um, and,

and you can be in the red there if you’re not managing it well. Um,

that’s actually, uh, part of our onboarding process is we will work with, uh,

certain agencies to understand if there’s, um,

outstanding invoices in a a specific customer’s, um,

name to, to be able to help them settle those out. Uh, but really the,

the big value add is just eliminating the violations and,

and no provider’s gonna be able to eliminate those a hundred percent. But, uh,

we’ve seen customers with, uh, programs that were

not super well managed, come on board with us, um, that,

that have reduced violations by up to 95%,

and that just makes such a huge difference, uh, in, in the cost of toll overall.

That makes sense. That makes sense to me. Uh, Brent, uh,

any any thoughts on that aspect of, uh, cost savings?

Uh, I wouldn’t, I would agree with a hundred percent with what Cindy said. Um,

you know, it’s, those fees can add up quickly and like everything else,

you know,

there are fees on the invoice that you don’t really know what they are,

but they’re just there. Um, and it’s,

it’s one of those things where from on, you know,

a week to week or month to month basis, it’s not worth the,

the fee’s not large enough to justify, uh, the time spent to,

to question it and whatever else. But when you look long term, uh,

that’s a, it’s a huge expense that, uh,

really can’t allocate to anything at that point other than just a cost of doing

business and being able to reduce those and, and especially, you know,

clean up the violations. Those were huge.

Alright, tha thanks Brent. Thanks Brent. And you know,

now that we’ve heard of about Decker’s experience and, uh,

best path approach to these various issues, I think, uh,

next we can, we can move to, um, the better way,

which in this case is Decker Truck Line’s partnership with,

with Bestpass to tame its toll spend. So Brent,

I’ll kick off with you. How did,

how did Bestpass work with Decker to address the issues you you’ve discussed so

far?

So, as I mentioned, we were, we were with another provider. Um, the,

uh, the process from our side was extremely smooth. Um,

basically they just kind of, uh, looked at our, our current situation.

Uh, we didn’t, we didn’t have a lot of, you know, a lot of gray area out there.

Not a lot of fees or violations or anything because it was being managed. Um,

but at the same time, we did see an immediate savings, uh, you know, Bestpass,

um, offers a, uh, they, they,

I don’t wanna speak out of turn here, Cindy, but they,

they are part of a discount program with most of the providers. Um,

that discount is passed along to the end customer, which is us. Um,

but we saw an immediate, uh, an, an immediate reduction there. Um,

you know, there were questionable tolls, um, regularly, uh,

as far as, you know, point of entry, point of exit, those sort of things that,

uh, we saw those, uh, diminish quickly as well, uh,

because they are pulling that position data from our E l B provider. And, um,

just all around the smooth transition, uh,

we timed our rollout with the, uh, uh,

new registration distribution. Uh, you know,

every year when we put the new registration in the trucks, they,

they all had to come to a terminal, you know, one of our terminals. So, um,

when they did that, we, uh, we issued the new transponder and, um,

we got our, our list clean, so to speak, uh,

using the a p i,

’cause we had all that set up that took us literally about four days to get, uh,

not four full days,

but four off and on days of development to get that done and, uh,

get the integration working. And, uh, it was a, an extremely smooth transition.

Um, no complaints whatsoever, and no real issues to speak at

As, as part of the, you know, the onboarding process with Bestpass. Um,

can you speak to, uh, integrating Bestpass with,

with the fleet’s t m s?

Yeah, it was, uh, it was a really simple process, uh, using the,

the Bestpass a p i. Um, it’s just a matter of, you know,

if,

if you have someone on staff that has a p i knowledge and and experience,

um, it was an extremely simple process for us. It was,

the hardest part about it was, um,

figuring out exactly how we wanted to store it in the,

in the t m s and who was gonna be responsible for that. And,

uh, just then it was just a matter of, uh, pulling the data that,

that Bestpass needed when we pushed that over, uh, and we did some,

some light testing, uh,

ahead of that on like day three and realized that we had left out a couple of

fields and we went back and, uh, added those to our,

to our A p I call and, uh, another 30 minutes of testing.

We were ready to go at that point. It was just the one person who handles that.

Now we got that person up to speed on the new process and put together an s o p

and we were off to the race. Couldn’t have been any sense.

Thanks. And Cindy, can you,

can you describe a bit the a p i technology that Bestpass offers

and, and how, in your words that benefits your customers?

Yeah. Um, so Brent mentioned it’s pretty simple.

I think a big part of that is there’s actually not much data flowing back and

forth. Um, if, if you look at what needs to be pushed to us,

it’s really just vehicle, uh, and equipment data. And, um,

it only takes a couple calls to make that happen. A couple a p I calls, uh,

and same thing on, on the spend going back and forth. I think, uh,

you know, if I look back to when I joined Bestpass about three years ago, uh,

the industry landscape is, is definitely changing.

’cause I think three years ago, centralization of,

of toll spend was really enough. Um, but as toll costs have increased,

uh, and I’ll, I’ll share just over the past few years,

we’ve seen annual toll rate increases of around 8%, across 10 plus agencies,

uh, each year. And so, um, they are increasing and, and as they’ve increased,

it’s just become so much more important to make strategic use of the toll data

really measuring and monitoring to be able to manage the expense. Um,

there’s huge violation savings just by using the APIs to make sure that we’re

getting timely vehicle list updates and equipment updates. Um, and then on,

on the backend. So we we’re getting the vehicle data from customers, uh,

and then we’re sending, um,

toll spend data back to customers to t m s, uh, systems, et cetera. Uh,

and it just really allows, uh, a fleet to make better,

smarter decisions around drought optimization as, as Brent mentioned,

opportunities for cost savings by pulling that transaction data

into a T M S or even an accounting system in some cases to be able to allocate

cost properly. ’cause there’s, there’s really two areas of, of savings. One,

um, is using the data to improve routes or price loads better. Um,

and two,

when you’re contracted with a customer to be able to bill back toll expense,

doing it in a timely manner so you’re not writing off, uh, that toll expense,

um, and cutting into to profitability. So, um, you know,

I think Brent covered it well. I think it was, you know, three years ago. I,

I would say, um, a p i and get a little bit of a, uh,

an anxious reaction from certain customers. Like,

that sounds like a lot of work, but, uh, to, to Brent’s point,

it only takes a few days if you’ve got somebody who understands how to,

to create the code, um, to call the APIs. ’cause it’s,

it’s quite as simple process to pass the, the data back and forth.

Alright, and so, we’ll, we’ll move on to number five,

which is where we, we, uh, lay out the Bestpass solution.

And for that, for that, Cindy, I’m going to throw the mic to you, uh,

with, um, with some questions on what, what best,

what Bestpass offers in terms of benefits to its,

to its various customers. And the first question I have, Cindy,

is can you describe the customization capabilities that Bestpass offers?

Sure, yeah. So, um, we have different, uh,

tiers of service that allow things like a p i, um, integration. Um,

and we’re doing different sort of plug and play integrations now. It’s,

it’s something that we’re working on with, um,

different systems to just give easier access to customers. And so there we’re,

we’re pretty flexible. And then I think also just on the coverage side,

there are many, uh, providers out there that have a one size fits all,

every truck’s traveling coast to coast, um,

or they only have regional coverage or only plate coverage. And, uh,

we’re really flexible in that, um,

we wanna create a solution that’s gonna work well for that particular

customer. So we can mix plate coverage with, uh,

transponder coverage to optimize, um, rates without, uh,

without having customers get lots of violations. And we can also, uh,

sort of blend regional coverage with, uh,

coast to coast coverage so that if there are trucks in sort of a hub and spoke

model, or some are, are, are staying regional and and only need, you know,

easy pass coverage, we can sort of blend that with,

with our coast to coast options for those that are over the road hauling from

New York to California.

Okay. And, um, you speak up to, you know,

maybe just run down the reporting capabilities that Bestpass provides

and, um, and, uh, and how mo,

how Bestpass monitors any toll misreads for, for the fleet.

Yeah, sure. So I’ll start with, um, with the reporting.

So I know we talked a lot about the APIs and,

and toll data centralization already. Uh,

but any good toll management solution is gonna make this information readily

available through a portal, a web interface, um,

where fleets that don’t have thousands of trucks or maybe don’t need or want

to create an a p I integration, um, can, can make, can, can be

good use of the toll data. So, um, within our portal, we obviously have,

you know, basic extracts of, of things like, uh,

the the toll transaction data vehicle list on file equipment list,

uh, in terms of transponders. Um,

but we also really look to share actionable insights with our customers.

So things like vehicles with a high plate toll where it makes sense to maybe

assign a transponder instead of using plate coverage so that fleet managers can

take quick action, get devices in those vehicles and take advantage of, uh,

transponder rates, which are generally, uh, much,

much cheaper than, um, than plate rates. Um,

we also show toll by facility, so Brent, uh, mentioned earlier, uh,

really optimizing, uh, load costs for certain lanes. Even if you’re not,

uh, pulling that information into like a T M S, um,

you can see where you’re accruing the most toll and, and, um,

make decisions about loads in that area, uh,

in order to really optimize sort of revenue and, and cost of, of loads,

uh, and not have toll bring you from, from profitable to not, um,

on those loads.

Alright. And, um, I’m not sure we covered this one, but how,

how does a fleet customer access their tolling information from,

uh, through Bestpass in, in, in real time?

Yeah, so really it’s just that reporting or the a p i,

because we’ve got integration set up with, um, our, our tolling agency partners.

Uh, we’re able to pull transactions back in a much more timely manner.

So there’s no, you know, waiting until month end invoice or, or pulling updates,

um, from lots of different websites. You can, you can grab it and,

and see it as soon as we get it, which is generally a lot faster, uh,

than you’d get it otherwise. Uh, and I, I did forget to touch on, on misreads,

we haven’t talked about that, uh, an awful lot. I know Brent, um,

mentioned the 2 million employees we have don’t have, uh, bus pass,

but we actually, um, we have automation, our system that is, uh,

identifying things like Mac Toll max tolls, um, and finding, you know,

back referencing that, that very first, uh, slide with content, uh,

identifying pockets of, of savings there, um,

by identifying those max tolls, comparing, uh,

that toll and route of that vehicle, uh,

to prior routes so that we can,

without any intervention from customers go and, and request those credits. Uh,

and, and that alone,

and we’ve already talked about sort of the astronomical cost of, uh,

toll for large fleets. Uh, we’re able to see savings, uh,

for, for individual customers,

anywhere from half a percent to 2% of their toll spend just by,

by identifying those max toll, um, and,

and duplicate charges that we see, uh, with increased interoperability.

Thanks, Cindy. And let’s, uh, move on to, it’s,

it’s last but not least, and that’s talking results. So,

um, I have the same question for Cindy and Brent.

I’m gonna throw it to Brent first. In terms of Decker’s experience, uh,

the results that, that, uh, that you think of, of fleet is,

will most likely, uh, gain with better toll management?

Um, probably one of the biggest is just the, the,

the hassle and the headache of managing it. Um,

that’s not,

that’s probably not your biggest cost savings by any stretch,

but just being able to sleep at night without worrying about it means a lot. Um,

you know, in addition to that, being able to, uh,

to allocate that at the load level and, uh, as Cindy mentioned earlier,

being able to analyze rather than just combine and compile and, and, you know,

charge it back to a specific cost center, uh,

being able to allocate it by truck, by load, by lane,

by whatever you need to in order to slice and dice that data and get to the,

get to the root of what you’re actually spending. Um,

and where you could recoup some of that cost, uh, at the customer level or,

uh, in our case with a, a fuel optimization system that takes that into account,

you know, a lot of times you can completely avoid the toll. Um, but, um,

I think everything on this, on this slide is, is definitely a selling point,

but, uh, I would say the number one is just the headache of,

of managing it manually and hoping it’s being done right.

Alright, thanks Brent and Cindy, um, what, what,

what do you see your fleet customers being able to achieve by,

by partnering with, um, with Bestpass, you know, what, what will be the,

how do they get the best results, if you will?

Yeah, um, best practice, uh, number one is,

is keeping the fleet list up to date. So, uh, we,

we are able to give one centralized place for that to happen.

Um, and, and customers who are,

are making updates in a timely manner get 95 plus percent

reduction in, in violations. And, um,

that’s really sort of the most important thing to get right. Um, we’ve,

we’ve talked an awful lot about, uh, the savings both cost, uh,

and time, uh, throughout this, this session today. Um, and I would just,

you know, echo what, what Brent said, uh,

for 99.99% of, uh,

our customers toll is, is a byproduct of doing business.

It’s, uh, probably a hundred percent of our customers,

it’s a byproduct of doing business and it’s a distraction, um,

that can become a really huge distraction, um, if not managed well. And,

and it’s, it’s definitely, um, something that,

that is helpful to, to outsource, um,

to folks like us at, at Bestpass. Um,

definitely having a toll management company, somebody who’s,

who’s waking up and thinking about toll and going to sleep and,

and thinking about toll, um, so that you don’t have to, as,

as you’re working to manage a fleet and maintain profitability and make sure

your customers are happy is, uh, is a smart move, I guess in,

in the views of, of our customers as at least.

Alright. Well Cindy and Brent,

thank you very much for sharing all your expertise today.

We do have some time remaining, so let’s uh,

answer a few of the questions that came in during the presentation and I’ll,

I’ll either throw them out to both of you or send one to,

to one of you or the other. Just let me, uh,

pull that pull pull my information up here. So, uh,

first question, uh, I’ll send this out to Cindy.

Are there any toll agencies that would not accept Bestpass

and this, uh, uh, this, uh,

viewer was noted that Denver’s E four seven oh seems

fussy in that regard?

Uh, so I will share, we, we do have coverage of E four 70, um,

and work with, with them. Um,

for sure there are agencies or, or really, um,

locations that we don’t work with, but typically, um,

really it just comes down to do they offer electronic tolling, right? Uh,

will they take a transponder? Um, and, and, uh,

we do have a hundred percent coverage of any major toll roads.

I think that the things that we don’t cover are very rarely traveled by fleets.

Um, but as, as those locations are,

are taking any form of payment besides cash, uh, we’re,

we’re eager to work with them and, um, have some pilots ongoing, uh,

almost at all times, um,

to make sure that we’ve got all the coverage that our customers would expect.

Alright, and our next question goes out to, to Brent and, and that is,

how does Decker work together with Bestpass to improve reporting or,

or work on issues? Uh, in other words,

can you expand on the type of collaboration between your team and the Bestpass

team?

Yeah, um, again, it goes back to that,

that partner relationship rather than a vendor relationship. Um, you know,

if I have a question about the, the possibility of being able to do something,

uh, I can shoot that over to the Bestpass team and, uh,

usually within just a few minutes I have an answer. Um, you know,

a lot of times it’s not an answer I want,

it makes me feel stupid because it is right in front of me the whole time. But,

um, you know, they’re, they’re always willing to jump on the grenade,

so to speak, and, and, uh, you know,

if it’s not something that they currently have, we will discuss, you know,

the need for it and, uh, the possibility of making it happen in a,

in the future. And, um, it’s, they’re top-notch when it comes to,

to service in general. But, you know, in that regard,

from a technical perspective, they’re always looking to improve. And, um,

you know, no,

no provider is ever gonna have everything that every customer wants,

uh, out of the box, but, uh,

they’re always willing to take a look and see what’s possible and, uh,

no matter what kind of rabbit I’m chasing, they’re always willing to,

to have that conversation and see what we can do to make it happen.

Alright, thanks Brent. And, uh, Cindy, here’s one for you. Uh, the, the,

uh, question revolves questions from someone who has only a few trucks in,

in their fleet and they’d like to know,

would a toll management solution solution benefit their smaller fleet the same

way it would a much larger fleet?

So I would say no. Um, not that it’s not valuable, uh,

because it, it is, but I think the value is very different for, uh,

a very small fleet versus a very large fleet. I think, um, with small fleets,

uh, they’re often not benefiting from all of this,

the volume discounts that a larger fleet is getting because they don’t have the

volume. And so being part of sort of the best pass pool,

we’re able to help get smaller fleets, uh,

to be able to qualify for volume discounts, which we would then pass through,

uh, which, which is a huge benefit. Now on the, the very large, um,

fleet side, we,

we find that sometimes they are already qualifying for the same volume discounts

because it’s all thresholds, right? That, that the agencies are setting. Um,

we are always qualifying for sort of that highest tier of discount. Um, and so,

uh, if, if a fleet’s already qualifying for those,

they’re not going to get added benefit on the discount side.

But in terms of centralization and reduced violations and, um,

and time savings, that’s really where the value is of, of having a,

a toll management provider. Whereas if you’ve got a few trucks, um,

you might be able to manage your,

your tolling account just fine without us in terms of time and,

and keeping the vehicles up to date. Um, but you’re losing out on,

on sort of those volume discounts where, uh, you could get those by,

by being part of, um, a best pass really just acts as a,

a bigger fleet, uh, to, to help our customers qualify for those things.

Alright, thank you Cindy. And that’s all the time we have for today. Uh,

we thank you for, for, um, joining our,

our presentations and for anyone who asked a question that wasn’t answered here,

we will be following up by email to, to answer those questions individually.

We hope you enjoy today’s webinar. I’d like to again thank Cindy,

Brent and Bestpass for this presentation.

I’d also like to mention that the webinar will be available on demand on the

heavy duty trucking website@truckinginfo.com

slash webinars, plural. Thank you and have a great day.