In a JOC survey last year, more than half of the shippers who responded said that freight visibility is the greatest challenge that technology can address. A recent Gartner Wants and Needs Survey also ranked visibility as the highest priority in the supply chain and in an IHS Markit survey, only 15 percent of the shippers surveyed reported being very satisfied with their supply chain visibility. It’s undeniable that visibility of freight continues to be a major concern for shippers, which is why some shippers are instituting visibility compliance and consistency requirements with brokers and logistics companies who broker their loads.
The good news is that Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform and carrier-centric driver app can help you meet and even exceed all components of your shippers’ visibility consistency and compliance requirements. With GPS-based location updates every five minutes and a driver app that incentivizes carrier participation in load tracking, Trucker Tools’ visibility software can be the difference-maker when it comes to providing accurate, real-time visibility/load tracking data to your customers.
Start To Finish Visibility, Location Updates Every Five Minutes
At Trucker Tools, we understand that your ability to provide load tracking information to your shippers can make or break your logistics business. That’s why our real-time load tracking solution provides you with true start to finish visibility. While some load tracking tools consider one or two location pings to be a successful load track, Trucker Tools aims higher. A successful load track for us includes multiple location pings that start when the freight is picked up by the trucker and end once the driver leaves the final destination.
Trucker Tools’ real-time load tracking platform gives you more than just one or two location data points: our software provides you with location updates every five minutes. This ensures that you have truly continuous visibility of your shippers’ loads, including location data during stops. Once the trucker agrees to track a load via Trucker Tools’ driver app, geofencing technology allows load tracking to automatically begin when the truck approaches the shipper’s facility and automatically end once the truck leaves the final destination. These two components of our load tracking solution — geofencing and pings every five minutes — ensure that you have a continuous stream of highly-accurate visibility data at your fingertips.
Match, Exceed Your Shippers’ Visibility Consistency Requirements with Trucker Tools
Your shippers may measure your ability to provide visibility consistency with several different metrics. These may include stop level visibility, i.e. visibility at stops. Some shippers require that 75 percent of stops be timestamped and that stop entry and stop exit times are recorded, as well. Shippers also may require, at minimum, location pings at least every hour/60 miles and geofence timestamps for delivery in order for the load to be considered to have been tracked with consistent visibility.
Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility software meets or exceeds all of these visibility consistency requirements. Location updates every five minutes ensure that shippers’ stop level, ping frequency, ping/distance ratios and delivery requirements all are met. In fact, Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform provides 100 percent stop visibility and location updates every five minutes, in addition to geofenced timestamps for pick-up and delivery.
Increase Carrier Buy-In, Visibility Compliance with Trucker Tools’ All-in-One Driver App
Trucker Tools also delivers the visibility compliance your shippers need and may require. Visibility compliance measures the percentage of loads on which a shipper has start to finish visibility. Your shippers may require visibility compliance rates in the 70 percent to 80 percent or higher range. Your ability to meet your shippers’ visibility compliance requirements is directly impacted by active carrier participation in load tracking, i.e. the willingness of carriers to actively use digital load tracking tools. Many visibility tools ultimately fail because they don’t consider or respect the role that carriers play in supply chain visibility.
At Trucker Tools, we understand that successful digital load tracking requires carrier buy-in and participation. That’s why we’ve designed the carrier component of our load tracking software, our free driver app, to provide real value to truckers. The Trucker Tools driver app includes 17+ tools and features that save truckers time and money. Among those tools is our load tracking feature, which gives you the continuous, real-time visibility you and your shippers need. The Trucker Tools driver app also provides truckers with real-time information on weigh scales, parking, available loads, truck stops, rest areas, fuel prices, routing, DOT locations, Wal-Mart locations, nearby hospitals and doctors, repair shops and more.
The multi-functionality of Trucker Tools’ free driver app incentivizes load tracking for carriers and encourages them to keep the Trucker Tools driver app on their phones permanently. Brokers and logistics providers who implement Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform and driver app on average achieve a visibility compliance rate of 75 percent. Many of the brokers and 3PLs on our platform reach visibility compliance rates in the 80 and 90 percentiles.
In a recent breakout session for McLeod Software’s 2020 User Conference, Syfan Logistics’ Director of IT, Diana Bullington, talked about the role that Trucker Tools’ all-in-one driver app has played in raising the company’s average visibility compliance rate to 84 percent.
“One of the great things about the Trucker Tools driver app is that it doesn’t just give carriers the ability to track loads,” said Bullington. “It also gives them tools for things like finding fuel, reducing check calls and locating truck stops. That helps them to buy-in more.”
For more on how Syfan Logistics is using Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform to meet its shippers’ stringent visibility requirements, read How Syfan Logistics Increased Accurate Pick-Up and Delivery Confirmation by 50 Percent, Reduced Check-Calls by 30 Percent with Trucker Tool’s Driver App.
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform.
