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Four years ago Tachodisc was known for making charts for analogue tachographs, but the introduction of digitachs last year has changed that. The company is now rapidly becoming a software and support operation, although it still offers all its original services, which include the repair of analogue tacho heads, training and tachograph analysis. The changes have been so dramatic, according to director Karen Crispe, that Tachodisc has appointed a software  director - Guy Reynolds.

Tachodisc's background is in anything connected to the legislation and manufacture of tachographs and charts. "Four years ago we only sold paper products," Crispe says. "But now we have had to appoint Guy as software director to deal with the technology side of the business because this is so key." And the change this has had on Tachodisc is astonishing. "Four years ago the average haulier could spend £15 a year buying a box of tacho charts," Crispe says. "Now there are all these gadgets and software and we're asking drivers to use chip and pin. I've had to double the size of my sales team to deal with the number of calls we're getting."

Crispe admits the change to a more technical environment has been challenging for her as well. "I know what customers need, but I do not know about the software and that's where Guy is so crucial," she says. She adds the problem is that everyone understood analogue tachographs, whereas there's still a lot of fear  about digital tachographs and some people try to avoid them. Others have taken them on board. "There is still a lot of myth surrounding digitachs. The most interesting and confusing thing is that there is still a lot to be clarified. Just look at downloads," she says. "The legislation states that you must download and store data from the digitachs, but really you need to analyse that data - after all, you're downloading it for a reason."

Download Intervals

However, the industry is still waiting for a definition of what should be downloaded. The recommendation says cards should be downloaded every 21 days, but the government is now suggesting this should be 28 days. For vehicle downloads the current recommendation is three months, but the Department for Transport is now proposing 56 days. Crispe says this makes it difficult for operators. "They get into the habit of doing one thing and then we have to tell them that the thing we recommended they do 18 months ago is no longer good enough because the recommendations have changed again," she says.

The switch to digital tachographs and the continuing uncertainty about the legislation mean that Tachodisc is constantly on the hotline to Vosa to clarify things. "We know what [the legislation] says, but it's useful to get Vosa interpretation to make it clearer," she says. "Such as what does analyse mean? Is it just looking at the data, or must it be stored in a way that it can be read, or does it mean doing something else with it? The response we got from Vosa was that the data must be read and actioned. It does seem that we and Vosa are making it up as we go along."

One surprising aspect of the introduction of digital tachographs, according to Crispe, is the company has seen an upturn in the number of hauliers signing up to its bureau, which analyses tachograph data. "We thought digitachs would make this part of our business decrease because the software is available for operators to analyse the data themselves, but operators with mixed digital and analogue fleets find it easier for us to do it rather than investing in the software and doing it themselves," she says.

Crispe adds Tachodisc is having to talk to the truck manufacturers and dealers more because hauliers are asking them how to use the digital tachographs when they purchase a new vehicle, which means they have to know the tachograph legislation themselves.

One of the problems Crispe identifies with the shift towards software is that people from a software background have written programs that don't meet the needs of the industry because they don't understand road haulage. "This is why we brought Guy on board. He wrote the software for us and we asked him to turn it on its head because we knew that it needed to be different to meet drivers' and hauliers' needs. Making him a director of the company makes sense because software is becoming more important to what we do," she says.

The shift to digital tachos means Tachodisc is dealing with different people at haulage firms. "It used to be the fleet manager or operator, but now we also speak to the IT manager, who doesn't understand the tacho legislation," she says. She adds that a lot of people in the industry do not have technology and it's a big step to ask them to deal with it.

Rounding Up

After the initial shock of using technology the rounding up issue with digitachs is now driving everyone to distraction, Crispe says. She adds: "People think that because it's a new piece of technology it should be better. The problem is that the drawings and spec for digital tachographs were released 10 years ago and the technology that was introduced 18 months ago is the same as that which was suggested 10 years ago. But if you think about how technology has changed in the past 10 years it's not surprising that the digitachs are not up to scratch in this way.

"Just think how different your mobile phone and laptop are from 10 years ago. The technology suggested 10 years ago is inadequate. With what's available now it could be GPRS [General Packet Radio Service] or black box technology, but because we cannot go back and start again due to the legislation we are stuck with old technology and nobody really has an answer to the issue.

"It raises all sorts of problems when a driver doing multidrop using a digitach can be 20 minutes over his driving hours, whereas if he was using an analogue he would be legal." Despite the obvious drawbacks of the rounding up Tachodisc has customers of many different sizes using its software, from one-man operations that use their neighbour's computer to download and analyse data, to the big logistics operators such as TNT and Royal Mail. "However, there are equally customers of all sizes that are adamant they are sticking with analogue. There's no real trend," Crispe says.

Because of the legislative nature of the industry and the fact that the design for the digital tachos was approved at a European level, it seems unlikely that anything will be changed with the current models. However, Crispe says, Brussels is now looking at the next generation of digital tachographs, although it will be another five-plus years down the line before anything is actually available. "They need to make sure they don't fall into the same trap and limit them to today's technology," she concludes.