If you’re the owner of a trucking company or a logistics business, you already know that labor shortages, truck manufacturing delays, detention and the COVID-19 pandemic are making it a difficult time to grow your business. High freight volumes make it a good time to be in the transportation sector, but it can be difficult to expand if you’re having trouble hiring and retaining new employees, and struggle to meet your customers’ demands. The good news is that it is possible to grow your revenue, despite these challenges. Using real-time technology in your operations can help you achieve greater efficiency and strengthen your relationships with your partners. Real-time technology also provides opportunities for growth that can’t be achieved when you do everything manually.
Read on to learn how fleets and asset-based 3PLs like yours can use technology to grow in the current environment.
Automate Manual Processes
Automating manual activities in your operations is a great place to start if you’re interested in increasing your revenue and load count. Making and answering check calls to track loads, using load boards to find trucks or loads, and negotiating rates takes time. If your team members do everything manually and don’t use technology, the only way that you can grow your business is to hire on more employees. Automating load tracking, finding trucks/loads, and load/truck booking reduces the time needed to complete these tasks. As a result, the people working in your business have more time to move more loads, which increases your revenue.
Technology such as Trucker Tools driver app and free carrier platform automate load tracking and make it easy for fleets like yours to track broker loads, search for loads and book loads digitally. Keep in mind that you must request permission from brokers/3PLs to see their loads in Trucker Tools’ free carrier platform. If you’re a logistics business, Trucker Tools’ broker platform, Smart Capacity, lets you track loads digitally, quickly find capacity and offer carrier partners digital load booking. At the end of the day, these technologies save fleets and logistics companies time — which can translate into higher revenue.
Streamline Workflows
Real-time technology also makes your employees’ lives easier and lets them concentrate on revenue-generating activities instead of repetitive manual tasks. As a fleet owner, your dispatcher(s) may spend all day on the phone fielding calls from brokers about truck availability and confirming the location of loads that are in transit. Using a single, real-time technology in your operations like Trucker Tools’ free carrier platform simplifies your dispatchers’ jobs. Dispatchers can use Trucker Tools’ free carrier platform to search for and book loads in a matter of seconds. Your drivers, who likely are not a fan of check calls, can use the Trucker Tools mobile app on most broker loads — without downloading a new app every time they pull a broker load. A bonus is that the all-in-one Trucker Tools driver app includes 17+ other tools and features that are designed to save drivers time and money on the road.
As a logistics company owner, your team may be “dialing for a diesel,” calling carriers on a daily basis to find out if they have capacity available for your shippers’ loads or posting loads on multiple load boards. With real time technology such as Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity, your team members can quickly search for capacity in specific lanes, on specific dates and by equipment type. The capacity that they see in Smart Capacity is based on the real-time movement of trucks, so that when they see that a truck is available in the platform, it’s truly available. When they do call the carrier, they already know that the carrier likely to have capacity in that lane. Smart Capacity ultimately helps your team locate and secure capacity faster.
Provide Value to Partners
Well-designed, real-time tech like Trucker Tools’ benefits your trucking business and that of your broker and 3PL partners. If drivers in your fleet are using a GPS-based digital load tracking app like Trucker Tools’ app, you can easily provide the real-time load tracking updates that brokers, 3PLs and shippers often require. When you track broker loads digitally, brokers and 3PLs have instant digital access to the real-time location of loads in transit, which makes you an attractive partner to them. If your dispatcher uses Trucker Tools’ free carrier platform, brokers don’t need to call your dispatcher to find out what capacity is available. Instead, they can instantly search for and find your available trucks in Trucker Tools’ broker software platform.
As a broker or 3PL, using Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity digital freight matching platform makes life easier on your carrier and shipper partners. Smart Capacity reduces the number of phone calls that you make to carrier dispatchers, which helps carriers run their own businesses with greater efficiency. If you post your loads as Book It Now® loads to Smart Capacity, you also can give preferred carriers the ability to book your loads digitally through Trucker Tools’ carrier platform. Book It Now® integrates with your transportation management system so that when the load is booked by the dispatcher, the appointment is automatically scheduled in your TMS. Book It Now® is a time-saving win-win for you and the carriers with whom you work.
To get to know the Trucker Tools team, be sure to read Introducing James Reine, Training Coordinator at Trucker Tools.
