How much is your current freight visibility tool costing you? At first glance, that may seem like a straightforward question that can be easily answered, but is it? Your current load tracking tool may be costing you more than you think.
If your digital load tracking solution isn’t reducing the time you spend on load tracking or doesn’t reduce phone calls to carriers, that hurts your operational efficiency and profit margins, and adds to the overall cost that goes beyond the solution’s price tag. If your digital load tracking tool adversely impacts your relationships with carriers and shippers, the cost is even higher.
Check Calls and Operational Efficiency
When you use a digital freight tracking tool in addition to check-calls without gaining additional operational efficiency, the true cost of your visibility solution balloons. Using check calls to track freight is an inherently time-consuming and personnel-heavy process that is subject to human error. Any digital freight tracking solution that you use in your freight brokerage should reduce check calls — end of story. If your current visibility tool hasn’t decreased your check calls or improved operational efficiency for your brokerage, you’re not getting a good return on your investment.
Automating your load tracking with well-designed app-based GPS load tracking solutions like Trucker Tools’ visibility solution can actually reduce the number of check calls you make to carriers and improve your operational efficiency. Third party logistics provider LTI Delivers reduced its check-call volume by 40 percent with Trucker Tools’ free driver app and digital load tracking platform. Fellow 3PL Choptank Transport increased overall operational efficiency by 20 percent thanks to Trucker Tools, as well.
Impact on Carriers and Your Access to Truck Capacity
Another factor to consider when calculating the true cost of your current visibility tool is how it affects the carriers moving your shippers’ freight. Single function mobile apps that are designed purely to track freight for brokers, 3PLs and/or shippers are often unpopular with carriers for several reasons. These tracking only apps don’t provide any tangible benefits to carriers and many truckers feel overloaded by requests to download a new tracking app every time they accept a new broker load. Another issue is that many single function load tracking apps don’t make it clear to truckers when tracking is on and who load tracking data is being shared with.
Asking carriers to use visibility tools that they don’t trust or value can negatively impact your business and profits. When you ask carriers to use single function tracking tools that they aren’t comfortable with, it makes it difficult for you to establish mutually beneficial, ongoing relationships with high quality carriers. It also doesn’t encourage those carriers to work with your brokerage again. Ultimately, that means you spend more time and resources searching for capacity and onboarding new carriers for one-time transactions, which ups the cost of your current visibility tool further.
If you’re getting push back from carriers on your current load tracking tool, consider using trucker-centric solutions like Trucker Tools’ free driver app, which can be the difference-maker in strengthening relationships with carriers. The Trucker Tools driver app includes a robust, GPS-powered load tracking tool, as well as 17 other efficiency tools designed to simplify life on the road for truckers. As a third-party platform, our driver app’s visibility tool can be used by carriers with many different brokers thanks to integrations with most of the leading transportation management systems. Better still, the Trucker Tools load tracking tool is completely transparent so that truckers always know when tracking is on and who is receiving their location data.
Shipper Service Matters
The ability to provide accurate, real-time freight visibility is crucial to winning and retaining a shipper’s business. If your current visibility tool is inaccurate in its location reporting or you struggle to get carriers to adopt your current load tracking tool and must rely on check-calls, you’re not delivering accurate, real-time visibility to shippers. Your shipper customers need real-time visibility to ensure they meet their customers’ expectations and operate as efficiently (and profitably) as possible. If you can’t deliver it, they’ll go elsewhere. If you’re losing customers due to the limitations of your current visibility solution, that adds significantly to the solution’s true cost.
Trucker Tools’ digital freight tracking uses the GPS technology native to the trucker’s smart phone to identify a truck’s location. You can view real-time truck locations either in the Trucker Tools’ visibility platform or directly in your TMS. Truck locations are updated every five minutes so that you always have accurate ETAs and can address delays as they occur, which helps you elevate your shipper service.
Another benefit of the Trucker Tools visibility tool? It can be integrated directly with your shippers’ preferred visibility platforms, including MacroPoint, FourKites, 10-4 or Project44. That means that you don’t need to make phone calls to shippers to give them updates on the location of their freight. Shippers can view real-time load tracking data on their freight directly in their preferred platform, which can help you win and retain contracts with highly coveted shippers.
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools load tracking and predictive freight matching solution.
