“The potential savings I found that we could get with Drivewyze just blew me away.”

Wayne Thornhill, Fleet and Safety Compliance Manager at Cumberland Farms

Cumberland Farms, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, operates 552 convenience stores in the Northeast and in Florida. In order to supply those convenience stores with 1.3 billion gallons of gasoline and 48 million grocery items, the company operates two private fleet divisions with a total of 134 tractors. All told they travel about 10 million miles per year.

The grocery division has a crew of about 65 drivers, most of whom are paid by the load and operate 50 tractors. They run out of a warehouse and terminal in Westborough, Massachusetts.

The fuel division has a crew of 150 drivers who are paid hourly and operate 84 tractors. Their trucks run from 8 terminals across the East Coast.

The Problem

Since 1994, Cumberland Farms has partnered with several in-cab technology providers, including providers of transponder-based weigh station bypass and electronic toll collection. “While these partnerships revealed the company’s issue with weigh station delays, they could not provide enough insight to its extent,” said Wayne Thornhill, Director of Petroleum Transportation Cumberland Farms/ Gulf Oil and Fleet and Safety Compliance Manager for Cumberland Farms. “They also didn’t provide many bypass opportunities, if any,” he added.

“When we took a dive on our operating costs in an effort to get a more accurate assessment of our costs-per-mile, we kept coming up with these big gaps between the amount of time lost each day to non-productive work, and how much of that time we could account for,” Thornhill said.

They expected that the discrepancy resulted from when drivers didn’t factor in additional time lost when entering and exiting the weigh station areas, when filling in their survey reports. This additional time was due to heavy congestion in and around the weigh stations. Through a process of elimination, Thornhill surmised roadside inspections at weigh stations was likely at fault. He was increasingly frustrated that even after changing fleet management partners twice, he had no clear answer.

The Solution

In 2015, Thornhill chose PeopleNet as the company’s new fleet mobility provider because of the system’s ease of use among drivers. PeopleNet’s integration with Cumberland’s back office programs as well as PeopleNet’s customer service helped seal the deal. Shortly after Cumberland Farms became a PeopleNet customer, Thornhill learned about Drivewyze. Impressed with the system and its ease of use, Thornhill activated Drivewyze PreClear Analytics for his company’s fuel delivery division. Thornhill admitted that he was a bit skeptical given his prior experience with transponder-based weigh station bypass.

“There’s a cost to adding this weigh station bypass service,” he said. “But then I saw the number of hours and the number of inspections Drivewyze could help us avoid. When I took that time savings and plugged in our hourly rate, the potential savings I found that we could get with Drivewyze just blew me away.

“At that point, it was a no-brainer for me to switch on the Drivewyze weigh station bypass service.”

Wayne Thornhill, Fleet and Safety Compliance Manager at Cumberland Farms

The Results

In the short time that Cumberland Farms’ fuel division has used Drivewyze weigh station bypass service, it has gained significant benefits in terms of driver productivity and safety awareness.

• Avoided 213 hours of weigh station delays over one month
• The additional driving time has helped most drivers haul up to twice as many loads per day
• Bypasses saved the company more than $33,000 in operating costs and increased productivity per month
• With the amount saved in operating costs, Cumberland has enough to purchase two new trucks every year

Thornhill said that Drivewyze has also brought about a greater awareness of the importance of completing vehicle inspections and HOS reports. It has helped drivers focus on reporting maintenance issues and taking greater personal responsibility for the company’s safety rating. The drivers see a direct correlation between the company’s safety rating and how many bypasses they can get through Drivewyze.

“Since bringing PeopleNet onboard as our fleet management partner and Drivewyze as our weigh station bypass provider, we are much, much more confident knowing that the efficiencies and safety of our operations as a private fleet are better off than they were without Drivewyze weigh station bypass,” Thornhill said.

“Our drivers are saving a lot of time and in this business, time is money.”

Wayne Thornhill, Fleet and Safety Compliance Manager at Cumberland Farms