In this blog series Trucker Tools Smart Solutions, we’re providing real-world advice on how you can overcome the greatest challenges you currently face in your freight broker/logistics business. If you’re still using check calls to track loads for your customers, your productivity is a lot lower than it needs to be. Trucker Tools’ digital load tracking can help you reduce or even can eliminate check calls, thereby boosting your operational efficiency. Greater efficiency frees up time for your employees to help you move more load volume and provide even better service to your customers — both of which are important when freight volumes are high and capacity is tight, as is the case now. Brokers and 3PLs who use Trucker Tools’ load tracking often are able to improve their standing with shippers and have more opportunities to move high value loads, as well.
Check Calls Waste Valuable Time and Resources
If you’re calling drivers and carrier dispatchers to get load location updates, you’re wasting valuable time and resources that could be used to help grow your business and your profit margins. Let’s imagine that you’re a small broker who is moving about 125 loads each week. Let’s also say that on average, your team makes seven check calls per load with an average check call time of five minutes. That means your team is spending 73 hours each week on a manual process that could be automated with technology.
Check calls also rely on the driver or carrier dispatcher answering your call and providing an accurate location update, both of which aren’t guaranteed. If one of your team members has to play phone tag with a driver or dispatcher to find out where a load is and what the ETA is, that adds more inefficiency to your process for tracking loads. If the dispatcher or driver provides inaccurate information, that likely adds even more time to your load tracking process, as well, as you try to pick up the pieces with your customer and figure out what happened with the driver/carrier.
Digital Load Tracking Saves Time
Trucker Tools’ digital load tracking uses the Trucker Tools app and the GPS technology in the driver’s phone to provide you with accurate digital location updates every five minutes. These location updates can be viewed by team members either in Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility software platform or right in the transportation management system your team uses. Being able to view the real-time location of trucks on a computer instead of calling drivers and dispatchers reduces the time and resources needed for load tracking. Instead of waiting for a call-back from a dispatcher or driver, your track and trace team can see in real-time when a delay is happening and immediately work to resolve it. Digital load tracking also allows you to provide accurate ETAs to shippers and receivers.
It’s important to recognize that digital load tracking does more than make your business more efficient. Digital load tracking also provides efficiency gains for carriers. Most drivers and dispatchers would rather not receive seven or eight calls from your team on a load, especially when there is tech is available to automatically provide you with this information. It’s a carriers’ market right now with capacity tight and rates running high. Fewer check calls for carriers means they have more time to move more loads and make more money. Using efficiency-boosting digital load tracking can incentivize carriers to work with you again.
Greater Efficiency Provides New Revenue Opportunities
Digital load tracking technology from Trucker Tools provides you with new revenue opportunities that can’t be matched by manual check calls. With manual check calls, the only way to increase your load counts or bring on new customers is to pay overtime or to hire new staff. When you eliminate or reduce the check calls associated with manual load tracking, you regain the time previously used for manual tracking. Returning to our previous example in which you’re a small broker moving 125 loads each week, let’s say that you reduce the number of five minute check calls from seven check calls per load down to two check calls/load with Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform. That gives you back 53 hours of your employees’ time. With this regained time and staffing, you can pursue adding new lanes with your current shippers and/or developing business with new shippers.
Freight broker Surge Transportation is using Trucker Tools’ real-time visibility platform to meet and surpass its shippers’ visibility KPIs. The company’s ability to meet even the highest visibility standards has opened up new doors to bigger shippers. Surge Transportation also has recently implemented Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching and Book-It-Now® to further increase operational efficiency. The company’s founder and CEO, Omar Singh, understands the new revenue opportunities that increased efficiency provides.
“With Trucker Tools’ load tracking and Book-It-Now®, we won’t have to hire more people to grow,” Singh says. “We will be able to double freight volume with the team that we have in place now. As we grow in 2021 and beyond, if we can keep the same number of employees, that will have a huge impact on the company and our profitability.”
“With Trucker Tools’ load tracking and Book-It-Now®, we won’t have to hire more people to grow,” Singh says. “We will be able to double freight volume with the team that we have in place now. As we grow in 2021 and beyond, if we can keep the same number of employees, that will have a huge impact on the company and our profitability.”
Stay tuned to the Trucker Tools blog for Part 2 of this blog, which will explore how you can secure capacity more efficiently with digital freight matching.
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ digital load tracking, digital freight matching and Book It Now®.
