Schneider is one of the largest and most successful trucking companies in the country. The company employs approximately 20,000 people across the United States with annual revenue of approximately $5 billion. Schneider’s services encompass truckload, intermodal, brokerage, and logistics.
In a recent webinar with Trucker Tools and Talking Logistics, Ben Schuchart, VP of Operations for Schneider Transportation Management, discussed how Schneider is using Trucker Tools’ Book-It-Now to enhance the driver/carrier experience, which has become a major factor in developing and retaining high-quality carriers.
Why Carrier Experience Matters for Schneider
According to Schuchart, Schneider’s approach to carrier utilization and development centers on providing a positive experience for truckers. For Schneider, that positive experience includes using tools that help smaller carriers quickly and easily identify the best available load options at any given time. Schneider also provides smaller carriers with discounts on fuel and tires discount. Using tools that benefit truckers’ operations and providing carrier discounts provides an incentive to truckers to do repeat business with Schneider.
The goal, according to Schuchart, is to get deeper with carriers, book reloads with them and build trust over time. If carriers continue to stay with Schneider and haul Schneider’s freight, that is a success. Schuchart says that Schneider ultimately measures its ability to provide a positive driver experience in terms of loyalty and retention of truckers for many years. Schneider aims to be an advocate for carriers and to provide them with technology and tools that improve their buy experiences with Schneider.
Book-It-Now: One-Click Shopping for Truckers
For carriers, booking a load with a broker/3PL can be a time-consuming process. Finding a load that aligns with the carrier’s availability, preferred rates, lane preferences, shipment type, and other factors can take hours. For carriers to book a load with a company like Schneider, they have to compare multiple loads/rates and consider deadhead miles. In the time that it takes a trucker to gather load information using traditional methods like phone calls and load boards, load availability may change, which makes getting accurate information quickly a top priority for carriers who want to maximize drive time and profits.
Schuchart reports that leadership at Schneider has identified Trucker Tools’ Book-It-Now as a way to help small carriers find and book loads faster and easier than they can with other methods like phone calls and load boards. Schneider lists all of its available freight on Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform. The open load information that is fed into Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform and viewed by truckers in the Trucker Tools driver app is always real and accurate because the load information is drawn directly from Schneider’s TMS. As a result, with Trucker Tools’ Book-It-Now, Schneider’s carriers can have a one-click experience similar to a Buy It Now purchase on Amazon.
How Book-It-Now Works
When Schneider lists a load in Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, the listing includes all the information the trucker needs, including pick-up and delivery information, weight, freight type, broker, location, rate, estimated miles and estimated deadhead miles associated with the load. If Schneider lists the load as a Book-It-Now load, a Book-It-Now button appears next to the load.
When a trucker wants to book the load as it’s listed, they simply click on the Book-It-Now button and the load is automatically booked with the trucker in Schneider’s TMS. A confirmation email is automatically generated and sent to the trucker (and carrier dispatcher). The confirmation email includes the details of the load, as well as suggestions for future available loads.
Book-It-Now reduces the time that Schneider’s carriers spend searching for and booking freight loads. The suggested future loads included in the confirmation email help truckers reduce deadheading and find and secure the next load before finishing the current load. These suggestions help truckers plan ahead so that they can constantly keep their trucks moving and making money.
According to Schuchart, Book-It-Now allows Schneider to accommodate an emerging trend of carriers who prefer digital, mobile automated load booking because of the efficiency it provides to their operations. Using Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform and Book-It-Now tool allows Schneider to provide almost instantaneous rate confirmation and load booking, which is invaluable to carriers. Providing these options to carriers ultimately improves the carrier experience, which can increase carrier utilization and retention. If you’d like to learn more about how Book-It-Now can help you enhance the carrier experience while improving the efficiency of your brokerage, read Trucker Tools’ Book-It-Now: Offering Brokers Fully-Automated, Real-Time Load Booking. Click here to schedule a demo of Trucker Tool’s digital freight matching platform and Book-It-Now.
