DOTslip Solves

DOTslip Solves DOT Electronic Ticketing

Launched in December 2019, DOTslip enables contractors and producers to digitally share tickets with customers, crews, carriers, and project owner representatives automatically.

The Department of Transportation in Georgia, C.W. Matthews’ home state, approved the use of DOTslip in late February. Photo courtesy of C.W. Matthews.

Management at C.W. Matthews, Marietta, Georgia, approached HaulHub Technologies, Boston, in late October 2019 with an idea. The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) had begun to include a new electronic ticketing spec in its job lettings that proved a bit prob lematic.

“We were in search of a program to increase our haul efficiencies as a company while min imizing the day to day paperwork currently required of field personnel,” said Lee Mims at C.W. Matthews. “During this process, the [Georgia] Department of Transportation an nounced their pilot projects with the e-ticket requirement.”

C.W. Matthews, already a customer of HaulHub Technologies’ trucking and trans portation solutions, was hoping the compa

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ny could develop a solution that would meet the new spec. The team at HaulHub liked the idea, and began developing its own e-ticket ing app, DOTslip.

“DOTslip allows for faster reconciliation of tickets for payment on projects, eliminates the need for costly antiquated hardware which transfers savings to the state, and cre ates a safer work environment by removing employees from hazardous areas necessary to transfer paper tickets,” Mims said. The platform is set up for near immediate recon ciliation of tickets eliminating the time C.W. Matthews’ employees, as well as state em ployees, spend at the end of the month tracking down missing paperwork, he continued.

“This will be our pilot operation in regards to e-ticketing,” Mims said, adding that C.W. Matthews plans to provide feedback from its employees and DOT staff to HaulHub for continuous improvement of DOTslip. “I be lieve that a mix of simplicity, minimized user interaction, and data accuracy will make this a success.”

MEET CONTRACTORS’ NEEDS, DOT DEMANDS

“We’ve seen a lot of DOTs putting out new requirements for e-ticketing,” said HaulHub Technologies Founder and CEO Joe Spinel li. “Construction companies, producers and the state asphalt associations had some input that would be useful to the process. That’s what we’re hoping to do with DOTslip: cre ate a collaborative tool that meets the needs of all stakeholders.”

Spinelli said some e-ticketing solutions capture and share sensitive data—such as

driver location data—that isn’t necessary for e-ticketing purposes. This not only raises pri vacy concerns, Spinelli said, but could also open up DOTs, producers and contractors to unnecessary risks.

Although DOTslip does integrate e-ticket data with HaulHub’s trucking and transportation solutions, DOTslip is a standalone app and does not require users to be customers of HaulHub’s other products.

“Data is powerful, but with that comes tremendous responsibility,” Spinelli said. “For example, if a DOT inspector sees that a truck is speeding and that truck gets in an accident, was that not the DOT’s responsibility to relay that message?”

“The goal of e-ticketing is to get rid of pa per processes,” Spinelli said. “It doesn’t need GPS or telematics. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than a digital ticket.”

DOTslip creates a digital replica of the pa per ticket, based on data from the producer. “The e-ticket will have the same fields you’d see on a normal paper ticket—plant address, job site, job number, etc.,” Spinelli said.

DOTslip relies on producers backing up ticketing data to a cloud database, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Spinelli said many producers, especially those with multiple plants, already back up ticket data on the cloud. For those that don’t, Spinelli estimates it’s possible to set it up in as little as a day or two.

Once the cloud backup of ticket data is complete, DOTslip can use this information to automatically create a digital recreation of a traditional paper ticket. “The producer owns the [cloud database account],” Spinel li said. “They control what data goes to the cloud and they give us permission to read the database live in the cloud.”

After this initial setup, the producer/con tractor uses DOTslip to create a job and invite all stakeholders to join the job, similar to a private Facebook group. “Anyone who is a part of that job—the producer, the paving foreman, the DOT engineer—will be able to see that ticket immediately,” Spinelli said.

In addition to seeing the tickets on a live feed within DOTslip, users can have PDFs of every ticket sent to their email and review past tickets within the DOTslip app or web version.

“DOTslip also allows inspectors to sign slips within the mobile app,” Spinelli said, “so they can be wherever they need to be on the paving line, or even at another job they might be responsible for.”

DOTSLIP: THE ROAD AHEAD

Spinelli said DOTslip could one day be used as a pay record and as a resource for quality control personnel.

“I think we’ll eventually see quality con trol personnel wanting access to e-ticket information so they can make notes on the tickets as they’re taking temperature mea surements and doing random sampling,” Spinelli said, adding that those notes would then be visible to all stakeholders.

For now, the main goal is to ensure DOT slip qualifies as an e-ticketing alternative. The Department of Transportation in Geor gia, C.W. Matthews’ home state, approved the use of DOTslip in late February. Haul Hub is currently in discussions with multiple DOTs across the country to get DOTslip approved in additional states.

HaulHub is currently seeking input from various DOTs to ensure DOTslip meets their goals. “This is not ‘us versus them’,” Spinel li said. “We wanted to offer an alternative solution which was collaborative in nature. The industry needs a simple e-ticketing solu tion, where truckers, producers, contractors and state agencies are comfortable, everyone needs to be on board or else the e-ticket ini tiative will continue to die on the vine.”

Already, four other Georgia-based com panies have expressed interest in using DOTslip in the first quarter of 2020. Spinelli expects this number to grow as other states begin implementing new e-ticketing specs this year.

DOTslip is available in the Apple App Store, and via the web. Contact HaulHub for more information about launching a pilot program for full digital ticket integration.

– BY SARAH REDOHL