Avoid the Congestion… Charges! With Freedom Job Restrictions.

In the first 6 months since its launch last year, it has been reported that TFL has made a whopping £40m in revenue from London’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) in daily charges and penalties. The ULEZ charge is applicable to cars and vans that fail to meet Euro 4 (petrol) or Euro 6 (diesel) exhaust emissions standards, and trucks and coaches that fail to meet Euro VI standards. If your vehicles don’t meet the above standards you face a daily charge of £12.50 and a fine of up to £160 if not paid in time.

Another recent article in Professional Driver magazine, estimated that more than 75,000 PHVs have paid the capitals, Congestion Charge in the first eight months since TFL withdrew exemption for the trade. TfL monitors the number of unique PHVs seen in the Congestion Charging zone during operational hours, and 75,175 were logged between April 1 and November 30, 2019. That’s a huge £864,512 paid by the trade, in just 8 months!

How can we help our customer avoid these charges and reduce your emissions? Freedom is a flexible, configurable, logistics system that excels at supporting complex, customisable business processes and service demands. With these rules set up, Freedom can significantly reduce and or avoid costs for different types of zones, such as the London congestion charge and ULEZ zones. Here are a few ways Freedom can help save you time and money, with rules set around the charges….

• Use a vehicle flag to highlight where a vehicle has entered the ULEZ zone. You can then optimise the use of that vehicle for the day you’ve paid for and reduce your emissions by avoiding sending other vehicles into the city.
• Prevent non-ULEZ vehicles being allocated to jobs that require pickup/drop-off in the ULEZ.
• Use job restrictions to prevent customers from booking a non-ULEZ vehicle, if entering the zone.
• Set up a pricing line, that charges customers the ULEZ fee, unless they book a ULEZ compliant service.

If you are already a customer that isn’t utilising Freedom in this way, or you are not yet a customer and are interested in how Freedom can help your business. Please call the sales team on 01366 386611 option 1 or email: sales@catalina-software.co.uk