Jarratt Transport Solutions

Challenge: Integrate EWDs and fleet management software to from the get-go for safety, compliance, and efficiency.

“It’s 2023, not 1978,” says Jarratt Transport Solutions’ managing director, Phil Jarratt. He’s speaking about his company’s decision to go with Teletrac Navman’s electronic work diaries (EWD), when it moved from a model using contract drivers and trucks to doing much more in-house in 2021.

When Jarratt began acquiring its own trucks and hiring drivers in 2021, the company had already been in existence, in one form or another, since the early 90s. Phil Jarratt started his first transport company in 1991, operating it until it was sold in 2007. “Clients wouldn’t stop ringing, and so we decided to do it again.”

While the company initially used contractors, the decision to own its own fleet and employ its own drivers came down to tightening COR rules, as well as contractor reliability. “It just got harder [to do with contractors] so we decided to put our big boy pants on,” he says.

This led the company to start from a clean slate in 2021, something Jarratt says doesn’t happen often with transport and logistics organisations. “We wanted to be as technically savvy as we could be as far as the adoption of technology goes.”

“We wanted to be as compliant as we can be operationally and professionally from a legal standpoint,” he continues, “and we wanted to build a transport company which our suppliers and clients would be happy to use as their new benchmark.”

Solution: Safe drivers, fleet compliance and the ability to do coaching

While JTS is all-in on EWD, it also uses the full suite of Teletrac Navman fleet management solutions, including calibrated electronic scales. These scales were recently put to the test on a weighbridge where the numbers coming back differed to what the onboard scales told the driver.

“The weighbridge operator didn’t appreciate being told their scales were out, but sure enough, they were subsequently tested and found to be out by over a tonne on a road train 1.2 tonnes,” says Jarratt.

The fleet management solutions let JTS do driver coaching, he says, and provides a scorecard, promoting friendly rivalry between drivers to see who comes out on top each quarter. The company awards the top-scoring driver a bonus of $250-500, but Jarratt says what it costs him to pay the bonus is a rounding error compared to what the company saves in fuel each month from better driving.

“While the EWDs don’t contribute to a fuel saving, what really makes a difference is the variety of performance and efficiency metrics that TN360 displays,” he says. “This is what generates the fuel savings, which I’d estimate being in the area of 2000-3000 litres per month.”

Through the scorecard app, the system tells the driver if they’re braking too harshly, accelerating too hard, or engaging in close following or manoeuvring. By driving within eco-limits of the metrics, operators are more efficient in their throttle use and better at keeping under the speed limit, leading to the fuel savings Jarratt outlined.

Used together, the fleet management system and the EWDs make JTS more efficient and predictable as a company, he explains. “We know if a truck leaves Melbourne in the afternoon, taking into account rest periods, the following night he will be at the border and ready for another seven-hour break,” Jarratt says. “Then he’s in Brisbane early mid-morning and from a scheduling perspective, it ticks every box.”

The EWDs are also popular with drivers because they eliminate risk, he notes, saying most of his drivers would not take jobs at companies not using them.

“From a driver’s perspective, as long as they do what the EWD tells them, which it constantly does, then there’s no risk,” he says. There’s no miscalculation of rest periods or for how long they are supposed to rest, and the operational staff have a full view into where a driver is in their rest schedule.

The proof of the effectiveness of the EWDs is the fact JTS has been audited six times, and always come up 100 per cent compliant.