Bestpass is best known for its software that automates toll management, but following a significant investment from Insight Partners, CEO Tom Fogarty said he envisions a not-too-distant future in which the company serves to cut down on more of fleets' administrative tasks.
"We're the clear market leaders in toll management and toll payments today, but that doesn't mean the job is done," Fogarty told FleetOwner.
With the recent investment from Insight, which paid more than $100 million for its minority position in Bestpass, Fogarty said he sees Bestpass improving its existing toll-management services as well as entering into partnerships to offer additional solutions that will help carriers reduce administrative tasks and focus on hauling freight to support the U.S. economy.
Fogarty said he envisions expanding his company to the point where every new toll facility built is added to the Bestpass network—although the company's website states, as far as major toll roads go, the company already has reached 100% coverage. The next step, he said, is for Bestpass to offer additional information and analytics on top of the solutions it offers today. He cited the company's partnership with Drivewyze as an example.
See also: Safety tech's immense value
Bestpass has the world's largest database of toll information, according to the CEO, with more than 142 million transactions recorded last year alone. The company leads the toll-management space with almost 20% market share, but Fogarty said the company still has "so much growth to do."
"We're working with a number of in-cab technology providers that we'll have some near-term partnership announcements with to be able to handle an awful lot of the location data," he said. "The ability to forecast, predict, and validate are all on this innovation cycle that we'll be introducing later this year."
Partnering to handle trucking's pain points
To foster growth, the company has begun offering solutions outside of toll management. In April 2022, it introduced a homegrown citation payment service alongside its toll-payment service. In November last year, Bestpass acquired ExpressTruckTax to allow fleets to e-file the annual heavy vehicle use tax (HVUT). And in February, Bestpass' collaboration with Open Road Drivers Plan allowed users to access ORDP's legal services.
In January, Bestpass partnered with Drivewyze, a tech provider known for its weigh station bypass service. Users can request a toll trip report using the Drivewyze edge processing system. The technology is used to create areas with more detailed GPS cookie data to collect accurate toll road entry and exit events that fleets can use as a source of data when investigating violations, over-charging, and fraud incidents.
"We're now offering an on-demand report that will allow a fleet to reference whether or not there's any truth to a suspected overcharge, or a suspected violation, or a suspected case of fraud that hit the bottom line," Drivewyze CEO Brian Heath told FleetOwner earlier this year.
"Toll payment will still utilize transponders, but our collaboration adds value for trucking companies that want to better control their toll costs and improve driver toll road experiences," Heath added.
See also: Report shows improved truck driver safety despite increasingly hazardous roadways
Though mum on specifics, Fogarty enumerated some common paint points he hears from fleets that Bestpass may someday be ready to solve. Licensing and permitting is an area, for example, where requirements are different between states and that change all the time. Permitting for chemicals transport, or even weight allowances, vary among states, adding administrative work to certain loads depending on route and cargo.
With solutions that could automate these processes, the tasks would become "a part-time job for somebody, as opposed to multiple people having to try and make sense of it," Fogarty said, adding that there's "a lot more to come" in the way of partnerships.
"If I can find a solution that's good today and meets the need—and have a partner that has a customer focus and innovation mindset—that's a home run."
And while the company has saved time for the office staff of larger fleets, it aims to expand into the owner-operator market, where saving office time for one person could mean saving office time for every employee.
"The core expansion vectors will be in the smaller and owner-operator segments," Anika Agarwal, Insight Partners' managing director, told FleetOwner.
Agarwal also mentioned "expanding beyond trucking" as part of the company's future: "Bestpass has already built the first self-service platform in the market, which allows individual drivers to sign up from their phone, receive a Bestpass transponder or register their plate, and get on their way, all within a few minutes. We see this, the opportunity to expand beyond trucking to service, rental, and government fleets, and the potential to deliver more products and greater value as the three pillars to Bestpass's continued success."
