Iveco Ford's TV plug
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• Tele-Truck, the recentlylaunched nationwide loadmatching service, has received a fresh boost in the form of a cash injection from Iveco Ford Truck. The truck builder has put in an undisclosed "sixfigure sum" into Tele-Truck, which is based on Independent Television's Oracle teletext service.
The Tele-Truck scheme uses Oracle to list available vehicles by counties, giving their location and destination, as well as a telephone contact number.
The service is free to buyers, who only need to tune into the Oracle service, although hauliers on TeleTruck's books, are charged an annual subscription of £520 plus VAT.
For this, subscribers are allowed two vehicle entries per day during the normal 15-hour daily, Oracle transmission time. The service is updated on the hour from 10am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Final updates are carried over to the following morning, while the Friday final update is carried over to Monday morning.
According to Iveco Ford's marketing manager Chris Christianson, the rolling sponsorship of Tele-Truck is "a natural extension of the Iveco Ford after-care packages."
Tele-Truck was developed by David Burns, who has been in the road transport industry for more than 25 years, including a nine-year stretch with Unilever as transport manager. When Commercial Motor spoke to Burns Last week, Teletruck had 35 operators on its file offering 80 vehicles. Among those on the TeleTruck file were DFDS and Transport Development Group member Charles Alexander.
Burns says that the system, which was originally launched last summer (CM 25 June-2 July), has created a lot of interest from road transport operators. Tele-Truck has also struck a deal with television rental company Granada, which will offer discount rates on teletext sets sold, or rented, to hauliers.
Although the system is mainly UK-based, Burns claims it is "international by implication — a buyer in the UK can send his loads anywhere in Europe using Tele-Truck". Burns adds that he has plans to expand the operation into mainland Europe "in the near future".