A diverse customer base makes your brokerage business less dependent on any one customer, industry or market and ultimately can help insulate your brokerage from unforeseen disruptions to the supply chain. When rates are low, adding more shippers to your customer base also allows you to increase freight volume to maintain profit margins. In a recent Trucker Tools survey, more than 50 percent of the brokers who responded said they are working to diversify their shipper base in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why Visibility Matters To Your Shipper Diversification Efforts
Freight visibility was a top concern for shippers before the pandemic. In the current market, real-time visibility has become even more critical for shippers, as they try to maintain an edge over their competitors. As Gartner’s VP Analyst Bart De Muynck recently point out in an interview with SupplyChainBrain, “With the current crisis, it’s become even more important. Companies are starting to realize that with all the disruption going on, visibility is one of the areas that can really help during this disruption.”
Adding new shippers to your book of business becomes much easier when you can show tangible load tracking results to prospective shipper customers. Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform can be the difference-maker in winning a new shipper contract. Our Smart Capacity visibility platform leverages the GPS technology of the trucker’s smart phone and Trucker Tools’ driver app to provide you with continuous, real-time visibility data. Trucker Tools’ visibility solution pings the trucker via our driver app every five minutes so that you always know the real-time location of trucks during a load. You can view the locations of trucks either in your TMS or via Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity real-time visibility platform.
Powerful Integrations Enhance Shipper Service
In addition to providing you with real-time load tracking data that you can rely upon, Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform can be integrated with your shippers’ preferred freight visibility software. These integration capabilities allow your shippers to view the real-time locations of their freight directly in MacroPoint, Project44, 10/4, FourKites and/or other shipper visibility software.
Sharing real-time visibility data with your shippers via platform integration instead of manual phone calls or emails reduces manual tasks and increases operational efficiency for both you and your shipper customers. It also augments trust between you and your shippers because shippers always know exactly where their freight is —without even picking up the phone.
Transparent, Real-Time Visibility Just One of 17+ Features in Trucker Tools’ Free Driver App
Low carrier adoption of digital visibility tools often dooms them to fail. Carriers may be reluctant to use digital visibility software because they’re worried their privacy is being violated by load tracking apps, there is no incentive/value for them to use digital visibility tools and/or the technology doesn’t reduce check calls.
We’ve designed the free Trucker Tools driver app to address these carrier concerns head-on. To address carriers’ privacy concerns, we’ve made the real-time visibility tool included in Trucker Tools’ driver app as transparent as possible. The trucker must agree to load tracking through the driver app in order for load tracking to begin. Once load tracking is on, the trucker can easily see who is receiving the load location information. The trucker receives a smart phone notification once load tracking stops. The trucker can pause or cancel load tracking if needed directly in the Trucker Tools’ driver app.
One of the reasons that carriers adopt Trucker Tools’ driver app more often than they do single function load tracking apps is that our driver app provides real value to truckers on the road. Trucker Tools’ free driver app does more than just track freight for you and other brokers. Our powerful, all-in-one app is designed to help truckers save money and increase drive time. Instead of using seven or eight different mobile apps when they’re on the road, they can use just one. Trucker Tools’ free driver app provides truckers with real-time info on fuel prices, optimal routes, weigh scales, truck stops, rest areas, parking, available loads, Wal-Mart locations and much more.
Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility solution also reduces check calls for carriers (and for your brokerage). Because our platform is real-time and accurate, brokers and 3PLs usually can reduce the number of check calls they make to carriers thanks to Trucker Tools. LTI Delivers has reduced check calls by 40 percent with Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform. Reducing check calls makes your brokerage more efficient, which gives you the time and resources to move more freight, making it a win-win for you and carriers.
Learn more about Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform by reading How Trucker Tools Unlocks Real-Time Visibility or by scheduling a demo with Trucker Tools’ sales team.
