Dream Homes on the Road: ContiConnect Live Helps WeberHaus Houses to Arrive Safely and On Time

Hanover, Germany, September 2, 2021. Dawn, and the final sections of wall are loaded onto the trucks. With everything properly secured, it's off to the construction site – over freeways, ordinary roads and gravel tracks to a development site on the edge of the city, perhaps, or even via narrow roads to a mountain village. Spedition Zink delivers the consignments from WeberHaus to the building site on schedule. A 50-metric-ton crane is waiting to lower the up to 12-meter-long walls onto the foundations with millimeter precision. Each step in the process is carefully coordinated. “We are used to planning our processes with great accuracy on the construction sites as well, and to deploying all the workers there effectively,” says Uwe Manßhardt, Head of Purchasing and Materials Management at WeberHaus. “It is therefore essential that we can rely one hundred percent on the haulage company we use.” Long-time partner Spedition Zink sends out a specialized fleet of 17 two- and three-axle trucks with low-loader trailers and semitrailer tractors for the task at hand. Five of these were fitted with the digital tire pressure monitoring system ContiConnect Live in spring 2021.

Customer satisfaction takes top priority for WeberHaus, one of Germany’s leading prefabricated house builders. “At the construction sites, our installation teams work with the crane provider and Spedition Zink to put in place a flawless process for the builders. The first build day represents a milestone for their home-building project. It is an unbelievable experience for all concerned,” reports Uwe Manßhardt. To ensure the specialized vehicles from Spedition Zink can deliver the supersize freight reliably and on time, every time, the company puts its trust in the digital tire management solution from Continental. “It is vital for us that no vehicles are out of service due to punctures,” says fleet manager Michael Doßwald. “Our large-volume transports cover a lot of unsurfaced ground at construction sites, which means we are no strangers to tire damage. With ContiConnect we can see in real time if the tires are in good shape and react immediately if the pressure or temperature of the tires changes.”

The system uses sensors inside the tire to constantly measure pressure and temperature. “As soon as a tire deviates in these values, as is often the case with puncture damage or sticking brakes, the system sends an alert to the driver and I proactively receive an SMS on my cellphone and an email on my computer,” says Doßwald. The benefits of ContiConnect Live for the haulage company are therefore threefold: “Maintaining the right tire pressures saves us fuel, plus we make full use of the tire’s service life and achieve a high level of operational safety for our vehicles,” says a satisfied Doßwald.

The conversion process for the first five vehicles was completed within a day. “A team from Continental and Vergölst arrived at our yard with a mobile workshop and installed the sensors in 84 tires,” says Doßwald. A specialist service provider then hooked up the system with the vehicles’ telematics unit. “For us it was very important that ContiConnect Live could be integrated problem-free into our Spedion telematics and that the driver can monitor tire pressures while on the move,” he adds. This integration into the existing telematics system is made possible by the installation of a Bluetooth dongle, which sends the collected tire data to the cloud in real time via a central telematics unit. There, it can be accessed via the web portal – again in real time.

This cloud-based solution has made data transfer faster and more reliable. With ContiConnect Live, a stationary measuring station is redundant. In the web portal, the fleet manager has real-time access to a detailed vehicle overview, including alarm, tire pressure and tire temperature history. Added to which, the vehicle’s location is transmitted via GPS and the operating hours of the tires recorded. ContiConnect Live therefore allows the fleet manager at Spedition Zink to monitor the tires flexibly – regardless of which construction site or mountain village the vehicles are working in.