Some companies, if diligent, may have binders containing required documentation in the cabs of their trucks, but more often than not, even those tend to get damaged, lost or misplaced.
Poorly managed or missing documentation consistently features in the top roadside enforcement violations each year with in-cab documents relating to the driver and asset prone to damage, expiration or misplacement that can result in heavy fines and other indirect costs.
There's no end to the amount of documents required in the transportation industry, which is why more and more carriers are going digital.
Cloud-based fleet maintenance software platform Whip Around recently launched its Whip Around Wallet – a documentation management system that helps drivers more easily store and manage paperwork on the go.
Tim Boyle, co-founder and chief communications officer, said the company has been learning from its customers over the past six to 12 months about the challenges they face with documentation and decided to invest in creating a document management system with multiple features designed specifically for the trucking industry.
“Our customers are bound by rules and regulations and generally are getting pulled over by enforcement or going through weigh stations and have a suite of documentation that they have to keep readily available for the drivers and the assets,” Boyle said. “What people were finding is they were managing these on paper (prone to damage or loss), or they were getting lost in emails, or they were using document storage products like Dropbox or Google Drive that had pretty basic functionality that wasn't necessarily tailored to the way fleet operators or fleet managers work.”
Whip Around created a system that allows companies and drivers to store documentation digitally in a central location but that also allows those documents to be tagged based on document type for quick and easy access. The system also triggers alerts when documents near expiry/renewal dates, which Boyle said is one of the biggest pain points fleets face.
