Drivewyze Debuts Weigh Station Bypass Service in Canada with 23 Alberta Locations

Alberta Motor Transport Association’s (AMTA) Partners in Compliance (PIC) Carriers can now receive weigh station bypass through Drivewyze PreClear service at 23 Vehicle Inspection Site (VIS) locations throughout Alberta.

With the upcoming addition of a station at Atmore, and at 23 mobile sites, there will be a total of 48 sites located on several key provincial and Trans-Canada routes throughout Alberta. The PIC program has chosen Drivewyze as its exclusive technology provider for bypass service.

The Drivewyze PreClear bypass service became operational in Alberta this April, and marks the Edmonton-based company’s debut in Canada. Drivewyze already provides bypass services in 40 American states, delivering the largest weigh station bypass service in the United States.

“We were pleased to partner with Drivewyze in providing our carriers with Drivewyze PreClear,” said AMTA President Lorraine Card. “PIC is a program with Alberta’s highest roadway safety ranking, and this service – available only to our PIC members – adds to that.”

The AMTA’s PIC program is a partnership with Alberta Transportation Ministry and the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Branch. To achieve PIC membership, carriers must undergo a successful National Safety Code audit, achieve a Certificate Of Recognition (COR), and complete quarterly safety reports.

“The expansion of our bypass service into Alberta—our home province in Canada— represents an important next step in the continued expansion of North America’s largest bypass service network,” said Brian Heath, president and CEO of Drivewyze. “Alberta PIC members no longer have to maintain dated transponder technology, which can get damaged or lost.”

Heath said the advantage of a weigh station bypass service for compliant truck carriers is that their trucks don’t always need to pull in to open weigh stations. Instead, only a small random sampling of member trucks need to pull in, saving carriers time and money. In the month of April alone, over 2,000 participating PIC member trucks received almost 15,000 weigh station bypasses from Drivewyze in Alberta. Based on its own studies of average weigh station pull ins, Drivewyze estimates that those bypasses represent a savings to the Alberta trucking industry of over 950 hours in driving time and approximately $200,000 in savings from fuel and operational costs.

And while Drivewyze helps safe motor carriers save time and money, Steve Callahan, chief of the Alberta Transportation Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Branch, says Drivewyze helps his enforcement officers be more efficient, allowing them to focus their attention on those carriers that need the extra attention. Also, because Drivewyze operates on a more robust platform than a transponder-based system, it doesn’t require the province to deploy and maintain roadside hardware and it permits the province to bypass Alberta PIC member trucks even at mobile inspection sites.

“The addition of Drivewyze will help our commercial vehicle inspection officers automate processing of PIC members, better focus their resources on manual inspections, and lower the volume of trucks entering weigh stations,” Callahan said. “As a result, they’ll be better able to deal with ever-increasing truck traffic in the province.”

Fleets with Drivewyze-enabled ELDs can turn on a free analytics weigh station loss reporting tool to help them determine how much Drivewyze can potentially save them before activating the subscription-based weigh station bypass service. The Drivewyze service in Alberta supports trucks equipped with select electronic logging devices (ELDs) offered by Omnitracs and PeopleNet, or on Android and iOS tablets and smartphones.

Drivewyze comes with a free Weigh Station Heads-Up service for real-time notifications at more than 1,200 weigh stations and inspection sites across the United States and Alberta.