Monthly Archives: July 2011

5 Features to Expect from Owner/Operator Trucking Software

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A trucking fleet has numerous vehicles that need to be monitored and maintained. With the right owner/operator trucking software, an owner can track the location and physical condition of his or her trucks. This type of software can pay bills, track mileage, notify of late payments, send invoices, and even secure profitable loads.



Software Type

As owner-operators or fledgling trucking companies, many of you are probably in the same boat I was: using a mash-up of QuickBooks, paper records, and Excel spreadsheets to keep track of shipments, cargos, routes, etc. Working up your own custom program would require extensive knowledge of programming and other computer skills. Fortunately, we’ve already done the work for you. Since TruckingOffice is a web-based application, there is nothing to install, everything updates automatically, and you can access your accounts from any location when you’re on-the-go.



Cost

Extensive applications designed for large fleets can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy and maintain. If you only have one or a few trucks to monitor, these kinds of software are out of the question from a financial standpoint, and many times, do not track what you need them to. We designed TruckingOffice with small trucking companies in mind, which is why we offer an owner/operator version for only $20/mo, a mid-size version for $45/mo, and an unlimited fleet version for only $75/mo.  A 30 day free trial is available for all the plans so you can take TruckingOffice for a test drive.

 



Tracking Capabilities

What do you need to keep track of? We understand that, especially for small companies, getting paid is of utmost importance. TruckingOffice’s front-end focus on outstanding invoices helps you to keep track of your accounts receivable, and follow-up with clients promptly. Our dispatch tracking keeps record of everything about a load—who ordered it, who drove it, what fees applied, dates, and what your driver earned. This in turn enables you to accurately track your invoices, as well as calculate driver pay, with a reporting feature that allows you to print a list of all loads on a driver’s pay stub. TruckingOffice also tracks your expenses, so you have all of your financial records in one easy location.



Maintenance

It can be difficult to keep track of the maintenance of each of your trucks. If each truck was purchased at a different time, there will be different insurance deadlines and other payments. TruckingOffice software has a Maintenance Log, which makes it easy to track which trucks have had which repairs.



Organization

Maintaining a truck fleet is complicated. Simply remembering every detail in your head is inefficient and dangerous, since there is a good chance you will forget something, or worse yet—what if you are incapacitated at some point, like I was? It’s not a chance you should be willing to take. TruckingOffice makes it easy and cheap to manage your business efficiently.


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Are Your Company Records a Mess? 3 Benefits of Trucking Business Software

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The trucking industry is a booming business that involves tedious tasks and objectives. However, these objectives can be very confusing if you do not have the right management tools. Trucking business software is designed to keep your company’s objectives in the correct order, allowing you to focus on other vital aspects of the business.

Simplification

An automated program like TruckingOffice can help you to manage tedious paperwork and notifications. It can be programed to create invoices, manage accounts, and generate accounts receivable. Trucking business software allows you to quickly send, edit, and create invoices.


A database is also included for storing customer and company information, including payments, and payments owed. Insurance and other expenses can be logged into the system easily. Lastly, as an owner or manager, you will be able to quickly access all of this data whenever you need it.


Fleet Management

A large trucking company may have dozens of trucks that need to be organized and sent in the right direction. Since each truck route is different, it can be difficult to keep up with all of them at the same time. TruckingOffice organizes your trucking fleets and pre-configures their routes, eliminating costly mistakes made by human error.
Tracking with tracking software, owners will be able to see where their fleet is at all times. This can be vital for managing and operating the entire fleet from one location. Many types of trucking software are browser based, allowing operators to access the program from any location that has a stable internet connection.


Final Tips

Before buying a trucking software system, make sure the components are compatible with your operating system and computer. TruckingOffice offers the best deal in trucking business software available today.  Take advantage of the 30 day free trial and you will agree that TruckingOffice offers a lot of bang for your buck.

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New Plans New Pricing

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In today’s competitive trucking and logistics industry there are plenty of expenses to spend your money on, and plenty of other investments you could make.  Similar trucking software companies charge thousands of dollars for trucking management software like TruckingOffice. When I first got started in this business,  I always figured that my money was better invested in more trucks and trailers than software systems to run my business.  That was largely because the software I had to choose from didn’t fit.  I had thin profit margins so the really expensive systems where out of my financial reach. The “cheap” systems I could find ended up doing little to make my business run better than I could on my own with a spreadsheet.  With TruckingOffice you no longer have to choose between capital investment and smart management.

 

That was the reason I set out to build TruckingOffice.  I wanted something built for my business that would help me make more money without costing me a fortune.  TruckingOffice is very dynamic with features such as: automatic mileage tracking using PC*Miler, complete dispatching and invoicing, and maintenance planning. And when I launched TruckingOffice I wanted to make it the best deal in trucking management software and  I wanted to do that without compromising the functionality that I needed for my business.  Over the last 8 months, the TruckingOffice team has be able to achieve both missions.  We have offered very low prices and continued to add new features to TruckingOffice.

 

It has been exciting to see the number of companies choosing TruckingOffice growing every day.  As we’ve taken on new customers we have learned a lot about what they needed, and how to grow TruckingOffice to serve them better.   Using what we have learned over the last 8 months, we would like to make the best deal in trucking management software even better by passing along our savings to our customers.  In the past we were billing based on the exact number of trucks,  this meant that you had to think about the price increase for each truck you tracked in our system.  We have decided to simplify the pricing to make it easier to do business with us.

 

Here are the new pricing plans:
Owner/Operator Plan (1-2 trucks) = $20
Mid-size Plan (3-7 trucks) = $45
Fleet Plan (8 or more trucks) = $75

How does this new pricing affect our users?
All of our paying customers will get a price reduction.  Everyone who is currently on a paying plan will be contacted and transitioned to the new pricing plans very soon.  If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us anytime.
 
If you are on a free plan, we will allow you to continue using TruckingOffice as a way of saying thank you for helping TruckingOffice grow. But, we will not be offering any new free plan sign-ups.
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International Fuel Tax Agreement for Trucking Companies

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The International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) was formulated to efficiently record fuel taxes for motor carriers. This agreement spans forty US states and Canadian provinces, making it simpler to track carriers that operate in more than one jurisdiction. Under the IFTA, each company will be issued one IFTA license and IFTA decals for each of their trucks, allowing them to operate in other jurisdictions without having to buy additional decals. Prior to this agreement, each state had their own taxing system where drivers would need to obtain individual permits for every state that it operated in.



To apply for a license, applicants must establish a place of business where their motor carrier operations are performed. Trucking mileage must be accrued in their state and operating records for the fleet should be maintained and made available to the state when necessary. In addition, the trucks must operate in at least two IFTA jurisdictions.



Registration and Quarterly Tax

Truck fleet owners can either complete the IFTA application package or have a Truckers Accounting and Permitting Service do the job for them. Once you have registered, a quarterly tax form should be filed, even if the license holder does not purchase fuel or operate during the quarter. The IFTA tax return is mailed on a quarterly basis to all licensed carriers. Tax rates can be viewed, downloaded, and printed at www.iftach.org.



Expiration

Regardless of where or when the IFTA license is obtained, all decals will expire on December 31st every year. Although licensees are recommended to renew the decals immediately after expiration, it is not required. There is a 2 month grace period from December to February until the next fuel tax.



Specifications

IFTA tax is required for any motor vehicle that has three or more axles, regardless of its weight. If the vehicle exceeds 26,000 pounds, tax will be required even if it only has two axles. All commercial trucking companies are required to obtain an International Fuel Tax Agreement license, although exceptions can be made for government vehicles and farm vehicles.

 

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News From the Development Team 7-5-11

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Recent Updates:

Recently we added a lot of upgrades to our reporting section.  We have added more detail and statistics to the company overview report.  We added a breakdown of miles driven on the miles report.  Now you can not only see the total miles by state - you can also see a breakdown of loaded miles, empty miles, and miles per truck.  The fuel report now shows the total cost of fuel by state and the gallons by truck in addition the gallons by state.

We also added 3 new reports:

 

Fuel Vendor Report.  Displays all fuel purchased by vendor to evaluate which vendors save you the most money on fuel.
Miles Per Gallon Report.  Displays miles, gallons, and miles per gallon for each truck which will help you evaluate which trucks get the best mileage and operate the most efficiently.
Quarterly IFTA Report.  Puts the miles by state and fuel by state all on one comprehensive report that can be printed and sent in with your IFTA returns.

*All miles for all reports provided by PC*Miler.




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Outage Summary

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What Happened?

Users of TruckingOffice where unable to enter dispatches in the system for new routes on the morning of July 5th. Users received a variety of errors. Our system staff started getting alerts from the application that something was wrong as well.

Why Did It Happen?

TruckingOffice uses PC*Miler to do all of mileage calculations in the system. They had scheduled a maintenance window from 5am-7am CST on July 5th to go from version 24 to version 25. Near the end of the window we started getting alerts from our error monitoring system that something was timing out when trying to talk to PC*Miler. The errors persisted even after the end of the time window. We contacted PC*Miler to determine if we had bad code or if there was a problem on their end. It turned out they had some difficulty with the upgrade and where forced to downgrade the system back to version 24. They will mostly likely schedule another window to do the upgrade again once they have determined the source of the problem. We thought that we had isolated PC*Miler enough so that the system would continue to work if they were down, but this outage showed that we missed several use cases that still depended on PC*Miler. This is the first time in 16 months that PC*Miler has had any downtime, which is the reason this issue was not discovered sooner.

What Are You Doing About It?

We are going to do several things:
  • We are now going to use the blog to announce upcoming maintenance events. We will also use it to announce any issues related to downtime. This blog is hosted at a separate facility from the application itself, so even if the application goes down this blog should still be operational
  • We are working on some new features to allow you to override the mileage as calculated by PC*Miler. This will allow the system to continue to operate when we are unable to communicate withe PC*Miler
  • We are reviewing the code to find any other points where we depend on external systems to make sure that the system stays up even if the external system goes down.
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A Brief Review of DOT Rules and Regulations

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Required DOT Rules and Regulations The DOT rules and regulations are meant to be followed by all truckers and other drivers on US roads. Each state has their own variation of these regulations, but some of the rules are enforced on a federal level. When training or recruiting drivers, it is important to remember these rules in order to prevent hefty fines and other complications. The Department of Transport periodically updates their rules, so it is helpful to have a specialized program or database that provides notifications every time the rules have been changed. All pertinent information on DOT rules and regulations can also be found at www.fmcsa.dot.gov. Driver Qualifications Before becoming a truck driver, an applicant must qualify by meeting the requirements provided by his/her state. All individuals need to follow the requirements of their state, even if these regulations are stricter than the federal rules. All drivers should have a state-issued driver’s license and a clean driving record. In many cases, private trucking companies have their own requirements that are much stricter than State or federal laws. Drivers who will transport large trucks that are over 26,000 pounds will need to obtain a CDL (commercial driver’s license) from the area where they are living. A CDL is also required for all truckers who transport hazardous materials, regardless of the size of their truck. In most states, normal driving credentials are enough for vans and light trucks. Federal requirements specify that drivers should be over the age of 21 and undergo a physical exam every two years. The driver should have a 70-degree vision field, 20/40 vision or proper lenses, and good hearing. A CDL trucker cannot be colorblind. If an individual is convicted in a felony involving alcohol, drugs, or a motor vehicle, he will not be permitted to apply for CDL. All licensees should be able to speak/read English well enough to communicate with police officers, prepare reports, and read road signs. In addition, they must take a written exam provided by the US Department of Transportation.

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