Heisterkamp Meets Working Hours Legislation with Trimble's Tachotime Manager

Heisterkamp Transportation Solutions, a European logistics service provider headquartered in The Netherlands, has implemented Trimble’s Tachotime Manager for monitoring, analysing and archiving its tachograph data for driving times. With the solution, Heisterkamp is meeting the Dutch working hours legislation requirements (Arbeidstijdenbesluit Vervoer). In addition, Heisterkamp also saves time.

With over 750 trucks and 1,400 employees, Heisterkamp transports its trailers across Europe. Their challenge is to read, analyse and archive tachograph data from its vehicles and drivers in their fleet.

With large volumes of data, Heisterkamp needed an automated system with extensive analytical capabilities that could be easily connected to other backoffice systems. The Trimble Tachotime Manager was an ideal solution to help meet these requirements. “We needed a driving time solution that allows us to monitor and meet transport legislation requirements and to analyse any regulatory violations. The Tachotime Manager is robust and can process our entire data flow,” said Tom van Noort, ICT manager at Heisterkamp.

The Tachotime Manager automatically generates a notification if the tachograph driving hours data appear to be in conflict with the legislation requirements. “In that case, we can easily click through, find causes, make comments and indicate the measures that were taken. For example, it may appear that the mandatory rest period of a driver has been shortly interrupted in order to drive a truck with its trailer off a ferry,” said Stefan Thegelkamp, functional manager at Heisterkamp and project manager during the implementation.

If a driver has made an operating error, Heisterkamp mentions within the Tachotime Manager whether it is a small, medium or large violation. The data logged by the logistic services provider, in order to prevent recurrence, are also registered in the system.

Another advantage of the Tachotime Manager is that it can be easily connected to a variety of fleet management systems. ” We introduce new trucks very regularly. With a connection to the WACS Fleetcare fleet management system, we don’t need to manually add new trucks into the Tachotime Manager,” explained Van Noort. In addition, the logistic services provider is implementing new on-board computers, which will transmit the data via cellular communications to the autonomous Tachotime Manager.

Heisterkamp implemented the Trimble Tachotime Manager after a three-month trial period.