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High-tech system helps drivers keep on truckin'

Trucks

July 3, 1996
Web posted at: 10:00 a.m. EDT

From Correspondent Dick Wilson

KENTON COUNTY, Kentucky (CNN) -- New technology is helping keep big rigs on the road and out of highway weigh stations, where legally required stops can be time consuming.

The current system of highway weigh stations helps state officials keep an eye on truckers. They are looking for unsafe trucks, overweight rigs and tired drivers.

While the weigh stations help keep trucks road-worthy, they also slow them down. And in the trucking business, time is money.

Luke Lawson, a Tennessee trucker who hauls up to 80,000 pounds of truck and cargo with his rig, is not a fan of the weigh stations.

"Every time we have to slow down and go through it, we can lose 20 to 45 minutes in weigh stations," he says. Advantage inset

But thanks to a new system, Lawson no longer has to stop for the weigh stations on Interstate 75. His company signed up for the Advantage 75 program, which relies on transponders, devices that send and receive radio signals, to keep the big rigs up to speed .

Truckers with an Advantage 75 transponder can sail by weigh stations without having to slow down at all. When a member truck passes over a strip in the road, the driver gets a signal giving him clearance to bypass the next weigh station.

Lawson likes the program. He figures he saves an average of two minutes per weigh station, which translates to 30 to 50 miles saved a day. Advantage 75 road strip

The Advantage 75 program is run by the University of Kentucky, where an operations center keeps track of a network of weigh stations from Canada to Florida.

The system does more than help truckers; it improves the environment and road conditions for all, according to Brian Blankenship of the Advantage 75 program.

"If the infrastructure takes too much pounding, then the average family going on vacation, they have to travel over the same roads in their car," he says. And, he adds, "If you keep traffic moving on the main line, you have big pollution savings right there."

So far, several big trucking firms including United Parcel Service have signed up dozens of trucks for Advantage 75. And there are plans to bring the total to 5,000 trucks in the program by the end of the summer.

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