Croner mixes and matches
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• A new computer-based electronic noticeboard has been launched in the UK by Croner Publications, allowing shippers and freight forwarders to advertise domestic and international loads, and hauliers to match those loads and to advertise free vehicles.
The noticeboard is called Croner's Teleroute, and it is basically the French Lamy system translated into English. Subscribers wanting to advertise loads on Teleroute will be given their own unique password and will enter details of the load, its destination, the size, weight and date of the delivery.
The password will comprise five numbers allocated by Croner and five characters chosen by the subscriber, and it will cost 30p a minute to advertise. Croner reckons that experienced operators will be able to log each advert for less than four minutes.
In France, where the Lamy system has more than 7,000 regular users, about 3,000 loads are offered on the noticeboard every day and the system pumps out about 250 hours of computer time information every 24 hours. Access to the system is easy in France where hauliers use Minitel computer terminals free of charge at any good truckshop, such as the famous Relais Routiers chain. There are now two million Minitel computers in France. The Government there introduced the units to replace the 'Yellow Pages' telephone advertising books. Lamy can be accessed through the Minitel computer network.
In the UK, Croner will have to persuade operators to buy a Minitel style mini computer (price 2365 plus VAT, rising to 2380 next year), or to use a compatible home computer such as an IBM PC. The company says that it will try to persuade as many truckshops and motorway service stations in this country as possible to install its computers and offer customers access on-site.
Hauliers wanting to look around the noticeboard in the UK will not get free access like their counterparts in France, however, because they will each need their own password to enter the system, after which they will be charged 16p a minute. Croner will also be charging an annual subscription of 250, though the company says it will waive the first year's fee for existing subscribers to its loose leaf business books.
Croner hopes that its loadmatching database will succeed where others have failed because it will be as confidential as the load advertiser wants it to be: hauliers and freight forwarders will not be asked to give away vital or confidential information on their company.
It believes the new system will succeed because it is so popular in France.