Garmin DEZL series IFTA reporting fault

Posting here since this audience would be the most likely to even care about the IFTA reporting feature on a GPS.

If you are using a Garmin DEZL series GPS to capture IFTA trip data, you need to check and see if that feature is working since the last updates. A pretty sure sign that it isn't would be that the IFTA icon in the settings menu is missing. That's the one you tap to get into the IFTA reporting features.

When I pulled trip reports for Q3 around Oct 3, there were firmware and map updates. Pretty routine. New maps, firmware, and traffic databases come out every month or two. Like dozens of times before, I ran the updater and thought nothing of it.

The only clue was that the option to edit the truck profile odometer reading on start up disappeared (I true mine up every week or so to keep the reports tracking with the actual truck odo). I thought, "great. some genius decided to fix a problem I don't have." Everything else worked fine, so nothing came of it. I never thought to check for missing icons, not that I would have noticed one missing if I did.

Until today. My son's truck came down with engine cancer last month and it's replacement is hitting the road tomorrow. I had him in a rental last week that required trip reports to be turned in. No problem. He set up a new truck profile in the gps and kept on trucking. Except when I went to pull the report today, I can't. The IFTA button is missing. I browsed the memory on it and archived the gpx files. I loaded the current one in Base Camp, and the trip track displayed ok.

There was a new map update available. After backing up those files, I installed version 2015-30 (new since at least Oct 3). The IFTA icon is now back, along with the option to edit the odometer reading on start up. The bad news is that no IFTA trip reports have been recorded since the previous software update. The tracks are there, but not the IFTA data.

Now, since I have nothing better to waste time doing, I get to manually re-create trip reports for two trucks over a month and a half. At least I have the archived track data to work with, but really haven't found a slick way to use that to get state miles other than dropping waypoints on Google maps.

This problem manifested on two separate 560's that were purchased a half a year apart (Mar 2011 and Nov 2011). If you're running the predecessor to 2015-30 on your Garmin, you may have the same issue. I'll follow up once I get back on the road and am able to verify it's tracking IFTA again.

 

No, it's not. On my son's gps, he set up a new truck profile called "Rental" and selected it. In truck mode. Auto, RV, or walking mode is never selected.

Regardless, no IFTA trip data was recorded since Oct 3 on two separate devices that had been updated on the same day, and operated in the same correct mode that has produced the reports for 3+ years.

 

I'm suspecting they probably released a bad update then silently put a fixed version out a few days, maybe a week later. If I was frequently plugging it in to check for updates, the impact may have been less than 1.5 months. But I don't. We have (not unlimited) mobile wifi on the trucks, so pulling down mega size updates while on the road is not done. When I get home, I have enough other things to catch up on than deal with gps updates. Had there been an email notification, I would have done an interim update as it's not a big deal to go in and manually do a trip or two.

If we were entering fuel purchases in the gps, that could have been earlier warning that things weren't right. I wouldn't have been able to get to that screen at all. However, we don't do that since it's double work. I already get a fuel purchase summary from QuickBooks, so no need to do another one on the gps.

Our gps units are 560's. There was no change in the map display. The only things that changed were:

1. On start up, the truck profile is displayed, giving you an opportunity to review or edit the settings, or switch to a different truck or mode at that point. The only thing that changed was that the virtual odometer disappeared from that display, as well as the edit screen where you can make changes.

2. The "IFTA Reporting" icon found in the top level tools menu vanished, leaving no path to reach the IFTA related functions, required to view them or export reports.

 

Once or twice a year the background map on the display just vanishes in the middle of a trip. I'll look up and all that is displayed is the truck icon and the route, but no other features like local roads and whatnot. A restart fixes that. It only happens when I've left my gps on continuously for days. Shutting it down and disconnecting power at the end of the day forces a restart and seems to prevent that from happening.