We all know the advice, “Just put a little aside each paycheck.” We can also apply that wise guidance to electronic weigh station bypass, like PrePass. It sure would be nice to bypass that backlogged scale, we might think, ignoring all the other opportunities to bypass other sites along our truck route. The cumulative impact from the “just a little” time, fuel and money you save with each bypass adds up quickly.

In this two-part series, we will look at three common interstate truck routes – one in the West, one in the East, and one cross-country. Using conservative estimates of time, fuel and labor costs saved, the series will show why participation in PrePass has a cumulative impact much greater than just bypassing that one problem scale. And with PrePass, those savings accumulate automatically; no need to “set just a little aside.”

Route #1: I-15, Salt Lake City, UT to Riverside, CA

Take this truck route from Salt Lake City and you will see beautiful mountain vistas, long stretches of desert, the neon lights of Las Vegas, and finally the expanding urban areas of Southern California. And you will also see five busy weigh stations on the PrePass network:

  • Perry Weigh Station, three miles south of Brigham City, UT
  • George Weigh Station, St. George, UT
  • Mountain Pass Weigh Station, Mountain Pass, CA
  • Cajon Weigh Station, Phelan, CA
  • Rainbow Weigh Station, West Fallbrook, CA

You would not be alone making this truck trip. In calendar year 2021, trucks from PrePass customers safely bypassed these five weigh stations a total of more than 1.6 million times! And that’s only when the sites are open.

Surprised at that number? Consider this: over 105,000 motor carriers and more than 700,000 trucks in the U.S. and Canada rely on the PrePass weigh station bypass program. Many of those trucks make the same I-15 journey.

The reasons qualified, safe motor carriers choose PrePass?

  • Flexibility of using the PrePass app or the PrePass transponder.
  • PrePass integrates with leading truck telematics and navigation service platforms such as Garmin, Geotab, Omnitracs, Pedigree Technologies and others.
  • Real-time driver safety ALERTS™ on the PrePass app, advising of upcoming work zones, traffic incidents and crashes, dangerous slow-downs, traffic congestion, and much more.
  • Actionable information from the easy-to-use safety data visualization software of INFORM Safety and the robust toll management capabilities of INFORM Tolling, both at no extra charge to PrePass weigh station bypass and PrePass Plus

But most carriers choose PrePass for the savings. PrePass’ 30 years of experience shows that for each individual bypass, by each individual truck, participating motor carriers save averages of five minutes of time, nearly half a gallon of fuel and $5 in operational costs. These figures are based on an economic analysis the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration performed on the benefits of commercial vehicle information systems.

On that Salt Lake City, UT to Riverside, CA trip, then, a single PrePass customer truck would save averages of 25 minutes of time, almost two and a half gallons of fuel and $25 in operational costs. With diesel fuel currently averaging over $5 per gallon, that’s more than $37 in savings one way and more than $74 and nearly an hour of travel time round trip.

Ready for the really big number? In 2021, PrePass customers saved nearly $12 million in their trips between Salt Lake City and Riverside.

Imagine where else you travel. It’s the cumulative impact of weigh station bypass from PrePass that counts. In the second part of this series, we will look at truck routes in the East and cross-country. Get ready for more PrePass savings and read the second part of this blog.

 

This blog is published as a public service of PrePass®, the most reliable and technologically advanced weigh station bypass and electronic trucking toll payment platform in North America. PrePass also includes INFORM™ Safety and Tolling software for improving truck safety scores and lowering toll costs.