Electronic Work Diaries (EWDs) are now officially and legally providing the trucking industry with an alternative to Paper Work Diaries (PWDs) as of 1 December 2020.
The use of EWDs was approved in November 2020 by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR), with the technology expected to deliver improved regulatory compliance and better safety outcomes while reducing red tape for both truck drivers and operators, in addition to providing insightful real-time data.
Teletrac Navman has been a long-term advocate of EWDs and is one of two companies that will be initially supplying the system.
“We are extremely proud to be one of the first telematics providers to be granted full approval from the regulator to roll out our Electronic Work Diary as an alternative to written work diaries,” said Teletrac Navman Chief Product Officer, Andrew Rossington.
“The solution will empower drivers and fleet operators to manage their own compliance, giving managers peace of mind that their drivers are safe.
“The benefits are there for everyone – better supply chain efficiencies, simple planning tools for drivers and transport operators and better road safety outcomes,” he said.
Rossington said Teletrac Navman has been developing the EWD concept for the past 10 years and way back in 2006 started helping a client with fatigue management issues.
He said the company already has some 40,000 drivers using what he described as ‘pre-EWD EWDs’ which is what has effectively become the official EWD as of 1 December.
“We’ve been on this journey for a long, long time and we believe the industry is now ready to take this huge step and that EWDs will become common place as time goes by,” said Rossington.
He said some of the larger transport companies that are clients of Teletrac Navman have been dead keen to get onboard with EWDs to remove the massive paperwork burden associated with the written work diary.
“Some of these companies have multiple full-time employees constantly engaged with trying to manage compliance – a great deal of which revolves around PWDs,” he said – adding that some companies have gone to the extreme lengths of shipping bulk quantities of work diary pages overseas and getting roomfuls of people to work through them.
Rossington said any company that is heavily invested in safety can usually see the merit in the ‘level playing field’ that EWDs create.
“With EWDs they all get to compete on the same even keel and they love that,” he said.
“But again, the real advantages here are the huge reduction in back office paperwork burdens and a similar benefit for the drivers.
“They get real time information about what’s going on with their fatigue status, so they don’t have to get out the slide rule to calculate how much longer they are legally allowed to drive. This enables them to plan their day better.”
Rossington said the EWD also reinforces a positive safety message to the wider community in terms of the trucking industry doing its utmost to manage fatigue amongst its drivers which ultimately leads to safer roads for all road users.
Asked about what happens if an EWD is temporarily suspended due to a systems outage, Rossington said drivers are given grace to prove their hours if this should occur.
“If they have an EWD failure while on a multiple day linehaul journey they can revert to a PWD because both EWDs and PWDs are legal instruments for heavy vehicle drivers.”
Further to this, Rossington said the Teletrac Navman EWD has been designed to cope with the rugged environment that exists within the cab of a truck.
“With our EWD we sell a ruggedised industrial-strength tablet which is designed to handle temperatures up to 120°C and the constant vibrations transmitted through the cab while the truck is operating,” he said – adding that the device is tamper-proof and can only be used for its intended purpose as an EWD.
Feedback from our customers, Rossington said, suggests that they see the EWD as providing a better driving environment for their drivers and even going some way towards addressing the shortage of skilled drivers in the industry.
“They have told us that once their drivers start using EWDs they generally don’t want to go back to PWDs,” he said.