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Prepare for LRUC pitfalls
Page 12
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A leading road transport technology specialist warns that HGV operators could pay a huge price for the Lorry Road User Charge. Brian Weatherley reports.
TRUCK OPERATORS will be left to pick up the bill if technology behind the government's proposed Lorry Road User Charge (LRUC) fails to deliver, warns transport software expert Derek Beevor.
Beevor's company, Road Tech, provides the web site for the Road Haulage Association and fleet management software for thousands of UK operators. He predicts that operators will also find it extremely hard to challenge any charges produced by the GPS satellite-based tracking system due for introduction in 2008.
"The industry is going to be used as the sucker for this," he adds. "We really must ask what happens when it doesn't work, with the key question being 'How do I check my bill?' We will have every single lorry being charged for every minute they are on the road by direct debit, but how will an operator audit it?"
Beevor points out that an LRUC operating company could decide to charge for data it supplies to hauliers who want to check their records Aside from cost implications, the use of satellite tracking could open a can of worms in terms of how vehicle movement data might be used by enforcement authorities.
Speaking at a press conference last week Beevor explained that as vehicles will be tracked around the country in order to calculate road charges. it would be possible for the police or VOSA to keep a closer eye on operators' vehicles. "We've seen documents from the police and they are very interested in that" he said.
Beevor is calling for an LRUC industry standards group to resolve these issues prior to the awarding of any contracts: "We need to introduce the government to the realities of running 420,000 on-board computers in HGVs."