The history of Lux Express Estonia dates back to 1994 and now offers first-class scheduled tours with the widest network in the Baltics. Lux Express buses transport customers between 7 countries and more than 20 destinations, from Tallinn to Warsaw and from Helsinki to St. Petersburg.

In this blog post, however, we take a look at how Lux Express has been saving costs and simplifying daily complex logistical tasks with the help of Navirec GPS devices and a tracking solution for years.

Easy control over fuel consumption

The fleet of Lux Express currently includes 105 buses, which cover an average of 74,243 km per day. That’s almost as much land as making two circles around the equator. With such mileage, it is extremely important that the fuel consumption and the factors affecting it are firmly under control.

Every single aspect that may seem rather trivial – for example idling for a long time, the technical condition of the machine, less economical driving style, reduced tire pressure – adds up to a significant increase in fuel consumption and financial costs for a large fleet of vehicles. Lux Express therefore uses a number of Navirec solutions that allow mapping problem areas and keeping an eye on everything important.

With the CAN Bus solution, it is possible to get a huge amount of information from the car’s brain, which is visible in real-time in the Navirec system. Using CAN, it is very easy to monitor the individual fuel consumption of buses as well as the technical condition and driving style of bus drivers. If the fuel costs of buses of the same make and model and traveling the same routes are consistently drastically different, the reasons for this should be investigated. Does the vehicle have a technical problem, or should attention be paid to improving the bus drivers’ driving style? In any case, consolidating information from CAN into an overview report makes it easy to identify these causes.

Whereas the driving style of drivers plays a bigger role in increasing fuel consumption than expected, especially in the winter. The Lux Express team does not compromise here, and the driving style of the bus drivers is also monitored using the Navirec Eco Drive solution.

For each drive, Eco Drive shows speeding, sharp cornering and braking, sudden accelerations, and idling the engine, giving the driver the appropriate Eco score based on these data and summarizing the information in a driving style report. For many years, the postal service provider Omniva has also directed its drivers to smoother and more economical driving, as it enables significant savings on both fuel and fleet maintenance costs.

In addition to the above, Lux Express has also interfaced its fuel cards with Navirec. The fully automatic fuel card solution is the easiest and most accurate way to monitor fuel expenses in the company and allows you to quickly track down fuel theft, should it happen. Since each bus is linked to its own fuel card in the solution and the locations of all gas stations are specified on the Navirec map, the system automatically checks whether the correct bus has been refueled with the correct card when entering the gas station. The system also signals when the company’s card has been used to refuel a personal car or fuel has been poured into, for example, a canister.

In the case of a fully automatic solution, the information is automatically gathered in the fuel card reports, and thus the cumbersome collection and archiving of checks is avoided.

Tachograph info is collected automatically and over the air

Just like cars with a maximum permissible weight of more than 3.5 tons or car trains intended for the transport of cargo, vehicles with more than 9 seats intended for the transport of passengers (i.e. buses) must also keep records of the driver’s rest and driving time.

Today, analog tachographs are used rather little, and all new vehicles are already equipped with digital ones. The goal of implementing the digital tachograph system is to increase traffic safety, ensure more equal competition conditions for companies, and better social guarantees for drivers. The Transport Administration of The Republic of Estonia and the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board supervise the calculation of drivers’ working, driving, and rest time, and since the consequences for violating the requirements are quite severe, companies must correctly check, record, and transmit the necessary data.

In addition to Estonian roads, Lux Express buses also travel in Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Russia, and Poland, which is why complying with the requirements for downloading tachograph data arising from the traffic law can be difficult and troublesome.

Lux Expressi bussid sõidavad lisaks Eesti teedele ka Lätis, Leedus, Soomes, Venemaal ning Poolas, mistõttu võib liiklusseadusest tulenevate sõidumeeriku andmete allalaadimise nõuetest kinnipidamine olla keeruline ja tülikas.

However, since Lux uses Navirec’s over-the-air tachograph data download solution, there is no need to worry about this. Namely, the solution allows data related to the driver card to be viewed in real-time in the Navirec system and downloaded over the air at any time, without the bus and its driver actually having to visit the depot. The data download can also be made periodically automatic, which makes work organization even more convenient. Also, all necessary data is always stored securely online.

In addition to the above, the remote reader of tachograph data allows you to keep an eye on bus drivers’ work and rest times in real-time. As a result, it is easier for logisticians to plan work schedules and calculate working hours more precisely.

Traveling in Poland is as easy as can be

A few years ago, Poland changed its toll collection system and switched to the innovative e-TOLL, which simplifies the passage of customs points and the calculation of tolls on Polish toll highways and national roads. All trucks with a registered weight of over 3.5 tons and buses with more than 9 seats are required to join the new system.

Navirec is the only competitor in Estonia to offer GPS devices that interface with Polish e-TOLL and a tracking solution. Since Lux Express also carries out line transport in Poland, it is an extremely convenient solution for them. Passing through customs points is faster and more convenient thanks to automatically opening barriers, and all necessary taxes are always paid correctly.

Easier reporting with Navirec

As already mentioned, managing a large fleet of vehicles and buses in several different countries requires logisticians and fleet managers to be able to select important information for making more cost-effective decisions and organizing work more effectively. This is why it is important to choose a monitoring service provider as your partner, whose solution is flexible and takes into account the personal needs of each company.

Navirec’s monitoring system offers its customers a huge number of opportunities to collect and consolidate a wide variety of data, which helps to achieve a complete overview of what is happening in the company and achieve cost savings. On our homepage, we have listed just a few examples of the types of reports that our customers use on a daily basis. In fact, the possibilities are much wider and thus it is possible to periodically and automatically collect any information that should be needed in your company. For example, Lux Express periodically prepares a foreign country report for its bus drivers, which gathers information about how many and in which countries the employees have driven during the given time period.

Be one step ahead of your competition

It doesn’t matter what field your company operates in – Navirec offers smart solutions to simplify work organization and save costs for everyone. As the market leader in the Baltics, we have helped a wide variety of companies, which value first-class customer service in addition to a professional tracking solution and GPS devices, to do this.

Our customer managers are always ready to find solutions that meet the specific needs of your company. And if this need should be something completely new and unprecedented, we are always ready to call our team together to bring this solution to you!