Registration Now Open for Trimble’s New Supply Chain in.sights: Virtual Series + Interactive Community Event

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The transportation industry is constantly changing and as a result, technology is critical to the efficiency of supply chain operations. Implementing technology into your logistics processes can feel overwhelming – there are a number of options and it’s difficult to pinpoint where to get started. With Trimble’s Supply Chain in.sights: Virtual Series + Interactive Community Event, you can learn more about the latest trends in the transportation and supply chain industries to empower you to accelerate the use of technology within your own business! 

This event is an expansion of last year’s virtual in.sight user conference + expo with a series of complimentary virtual educational sessions open to anyone who wants to attend. Featuring a wide range of speakers including industry and third party experts, Trimble leaders and customers, Trimble’s Supply Chain in.sights: Virtual Series + Interactive Community Event will help attendees “elevate their perspective” so they can optimize and better connect all parts of the supply chain.

Kicking Things Off with Adrian Gonzalez from Talking Logistics

Two “Elevate Your Data Perspective” presentations on June 22 and 24 will kick off the event, the first one featuring Adrian Gonzalez from Talking Logistics. Adrian will discuss how logistics professionals can leverage data to drive continuous improvement and increase operational efficiencies. The full descriptions for the first two sessions are included below: 

Data: Don’t Drown In It, Deliver with It!

Tuesday, June 22 | 2 p.m. ET

It’s often said that companies are drowning in data, but starving for insights. This is particularly true in transportation and logistics operations, where large quantities of data from ELDs, mobile apps, sensors, transportation management systems, and other sources are created and shared every day. Instead of drowning in it, how can logistics professionals leverage data to drive continuous improvement and increase operational efficiencies? What are the most important factors for success? Who is responsible for data quality management?

The answers to these questions are all crucial when it comes to a successfully operating supply chain. Join industry analyst Adrian Gonzalez to explore how logistics professionals can harness data to deliver valuable benefits to their business. Take part and get a chance to ask your own question during a live Q&A!

Beyond Buzzwords: Applying AI and Machine Learning to Transportation

Thursday, June 24 | 2 p.m. ET

Artificial intelligence and machine learning may sound familiar, but do you know how they can enhance the transportation and supply chain industries? Attend this session to hear from Trimble data scientists and customers who leverage these technologies to improve operational efficiencies and make decisions driven by data. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of these advanced technologies and the potential to apply them to their own businesses.

Save Your Seat to Gain Valuable “in.sights”

Are you ready to join us later this month and elevate your perspective on operating more efficiently in the transportation supply chain?

Register today to save your spot at these informative events and look for more details from us on future sessions in the coming weeks. If you have any immediate questions, please feel free to drop us a line via email at insightuc@trimble.com.

We look forward to “seeing” you soon!

Thank A Trucker Blog Post Kuebix

Trucking Companies Continue Service During Covid-19 – #ThankATrucker

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Truck drivers perform an essential service to our country with every trip they take, especially during times of crisis like what’s happening now. It’s paramount that we take a moment to #ThankATrucker for everything they do to keep our country and economy on its feet during Covid-19.

Trucking is the Backbone of the U.S. Economy

There are an estimated 3.5 million professional truck drivers populating the roads and delivering 71.4% of the country’s total freight tonnage. They are responsible for the consistent flow of food, water, medical supplies and other necessities in stores worldwide. More than 80% of communities in the United States depend on truck drivers to deliver all of their goods. Their job demands an extensive number of hours on the road, time away from family and trading in home-cooked meals for whatever fast food is available at rest stops. Being a truck driver is a serious commitment and every sacrifice they make ensures life continues normally for the rest of the country.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has shifted the spotlight onto these hardworking individuals as supply chains throughout the country are struggling to adjust. Losses for U.S. retailers from production and transportation shortages from March 9 to April 20 are estimated to amount to $700 million. Businesses of all sizes that have been deemed non-essential have halted in-store operations entirely while manufacturers of household products like toilet paper and disinfectant wipes are experiencing a next-level increase in demand.

How Trucking Companies are Going Above and Beyond to Handle the Crisis

 Estes Express Lines

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced a partnership with Estes Express Lines to ship 56,000 meals to food banks throughout the state. Estes has also teamed up with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management to aid in the distribution of personal protective equipment to hospitals and first responders.

 Paper Transport Inc.

Truckload carrier Paper Transport, Inc. announced a minimum charitable pledge of $100,000 to the support of Covid-19 victims with hopes of either doubling or tripling it over the next month. With news of how the virus has affected communities and schools continuing to spread, the ownership team at Paper Transport decided to pledge to donate half of their profits during the month of April.

J.B. Hunt Transport

Trucking company J.B. Hunt is providing a one-time $500 bonus for its drivers and personnel at field operations and customer facilities as a result of their hard work and dedication. CEO John Roberts said “All of our employees have gone above and beyond the call to action during this crisis. They have kept pace with the evolving supply chain needs of our customers in the face of great uncertainty.”

UPS

UPS is working directly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to distribute N95 masks and gloves for healthcare workers. FEMA will utilize UPS’s air hub in Louisville, Kentucky to stage shipments from overseas. CEO David Abney stated that “UPS Healthcare has the expertise and experience to move vital, life-saving medicines, medical devices, diagnostic specimens and supplies everywhere they are needed.” UPS is also working with LestGetChecked, Henry Schein and Pharmatech.

Tyson Foods

Earlier this week, Tyson Foods announced that they will be giving the 116,000 truck drivers and frontline workers responsible for keeping their food distribution running smoothly a $500 bonus. Tyson also changed part of their meat production to instead focus on retail packaging to adjust to the heightened demand for frozen goods. “Our team members are leading the charge to continue providing food to the nation. The bonuses are another way we can say ‘thank you’ for their efforts,” said CEO Noel White.

How Kuebix is Helping Shippers Keep Their Supply Chains Moving

Kuebix understands the importance of keeping supply chains moving in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. To help companies battle through Covid-19, Kuebix is offering 60-days free of our award-winning Kuebix Business Pro TMS. Our cloud-based TMS technology can help shippers expand capacity and effectively manage their supply chains remotely.

Kuebix Load Match Truckload

Kuebix Has Your Truckload Needs Covered

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Finding the right truck at the right price has always been a challenge…until now!

Kuebix, a Trimble Company has built the largest connected shipping platform in North America. Kuebix offers our shipping members unprecedented access to a vast ecosystem of carriers and intermediaries including asset carriers, private fleets, truckload brokers, freight forwarders, and digital freight matching services.

Stop spending countless hours navigating various systems, sending emails, making phone calls, and researching multiple websites to find a truck. Kuebix has a one-stop solution for ALL your truckload moves. Simply post your load to Kuebix Load Match to connect to our vast carrier network, or contact the Kuebix team to help with RFP and other truckload needs. The best part – with Kuebix you can manage all your truckload moves (spot and negotiated) on the same platform where you manage your LTL and parcel shipments. One platform. Every shipping need. Kuebix has you covered.

With Kuebix Load Match you can:

  • •     Manage spot volume
  • •     Build your bench of carriers
  • •     Improve pricing

Truckload solution for shippers with regular shipping lanes

Kuebix provides complimentary truckload rate assessments leveraging the Load Match platform to help companies determine whether they are making the most strategic truckload shipping decisions. The assessment gives shippers insight into whether they can save money on recurring or spot freight by leveraging Kuebix’s vast network of truckload assets. Kuebix can also help shippers conduct formal RFPs to source negotiated rates with truckload carriers on the Kuebix platform.

One time load coverage for occasional truckload shipments

Shippers can use Kuebix Load Match to quickly and easily receive spot bids from Kuebix’s vast carrier network to compare and book side-by-side with their negotiated rates. This service is free to use and helps shippers expand their booking options to always get the best rate and service type for their needs.

For more information, email us at LoadMatch@Kuebix.com.

 

Kuebix TMS Cyber Monday Black Friday Statistics

Did Black Friday/Cyber Monday Tax Your Logistics Operation?

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This year’s Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday retail sales broke records. According to Shopify, over 25.5 million consumers made a purchase from a Shopify merchant on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or in between. Shoppers spent an average of $83.05 per order and focused heavily on makeup, mobile phone accessories and jackets. Cell phones dominated the holiday shopping season with 69% of sales made on phones or tablets.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales reached over $2.9 billion, a huge success in comparison to last year’s $1.8 billion. It’s estimated that at the peak of the shopping frenzy, shoppers were spending over $1.5 million per minute!

The Aftermath

Now that orders have been placed, they must be delivered. As a shipper, you should ask yourself the following questions:

  • • Can your logistics operation keep up with the velocity of orders speeding through your e-commerce engine?
  • • Will you have to pay expedited freight charges to make sure customers get their orders on-time?
  • • Can you quickly find capacity with your contracted carriers to stay ahead of demand?
  • • Can you easily contract with carriers for any mode to book a load?
  • • Can you effortlessly compare your contracted rates to the spot market to find a better rate?
  • • Once the holiday rush is all over, can you look historically at shipment data to find areas for improvement?

With Kuebix’s transportation management system (TMS), shippers can do all of the above – and more!

Kuebix Shipper is a free TMS that allows shippers of any size to rate, book and track shipments via LTL, TL and Parcel – all in about the time it takes to purchase an airline flight online. Join our online global community of shippers to help match demand with capacity during this busy holiday season.

Kuebix Business Pro is a full-service TMS for multiple users with advanced analytics and carrier scorecards, freight bill audit and pay, claims management and integrations with other solutions. Using Kuebix Business Pro during the busy holiday season allows you to uncover rate exceptions and discrepancies for added savings; integrate your order management system for streamlined transport planning; and leverage analytics to reduce freight spend.

Kuebix Enterprise is a configurable TMS that offers advanced applications to meet your logistics operation’s needs. Managed services provide shippers partnerships with Kuebix freight experts to uncover even greater efficiencies and savings, with full-tracking and visibility of your freight from the dock to your customer’s doorstep.

 

 

 

By choosing the right TMS, retailers can keep up with the exponential growth of their e-commerce operations during this holiday season and beyond!

 

show me global logistics case study

How Kuebix Community Load Match is Helping a Brokerage Source New Opportunities

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Show Me Global Logistics Leverages Kuebix Community Load Match to Fill Available Capacity and Find New Shipper Opportunities

Show Me Global Logistics is a national broker and logistics provider with over 5,000 vetted carriers within their network of partners. They help pair freight with available capacity for any mode, including LTL, TL, intermodal, international shipping and even expedited shipping.

Located in the heart of the USA in Springfield, Missouri, the company’s mission is to provide innovative supply chain solutions on a grand scale while still being flexible enough to handle every customer service need on a personal level.

To continue to grow their business, Show Me Global Logistics has sales professionals nationwide who source opportunities with shippers that have supply chain and logistics needs. The company also works with some customers on a transactional basis before establishing a full logistics strategy. This is often a great way to bring in new customers while ensuring they get
exactly what they need.

When Show Me Global Logistics’ team of industry experts first heard about Kuebix’s built-in spot market feature, they knew that it would be a highly efficient way to both fill capacity while at the same time discovering shippers with long-term logistics needs. The brokerage became an early adopter of the program and has been seeing the benefits ever since.

“Kuebix Community Load Match has been a tremendous solution for us! When a Kuebix user posts to Community Load Match, we get the opportunity to bid on their freight. Once we’ve been awarded the load, we get the opportunity to prove ourselves to the shipper, do our due diligence to identify their needs, and continue to win their business. It’s like having another salesperson on the street!”

– DAVE AUSBURY, SHOW ME GLOBAL LOGISTICS CO-FOUNDER

“Community Load Match is fantastic and we plan to continue to leverage it to fill capacity and find new opportunities. To date, we’ve fulfilled well over 100 shipments. Some are with repeat customers and some turn into longterm, mutually beneficial relationships. Without Community Load Match, these opportunities might never have come our way.”

– ROBBIE BREWER, SHOW ME GLOBAL LOGISTICS CO-FOUNDER

“The Community Load Match technology is great! We receive email notifications when a shipper requests a spot quote and all we need to do is click on the link and we can bid on the shipment! There’s even a place for special requests, which is really helpful. I can look at the shipment at a glance and know what kind of solution I can provide to the customer. It makes it easy for me to provide appropriate solutions quickly!”

– KARRY BAKER, SHOW ME GLOBAL LOGISTICS HEAD OF PRICING

How Does Kuebix Community Load Match Work?

Any Kuebix TMS user can search for truckload capacity and compare spot quotes in Community Load Match from a vast network including brokers, carriers and freight marketplaces. By posting a load to the community, shippers receive spot quotes and can book and track their shipments directly in the technology.

Click here to download this case study as a PDF: https://www.kuebix.com/resources/community-load-match-show-me-global-logistics-case-study/

Kuebix National Truck Driver Appreciation Week

Highlights From National Truck Driver Appreciation Week

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National Truck Driver Appreciation Week is here and it’s important to take the time to recognize truck drivers and all they do for the transportation industry. Officially occurring between September 8th and September 14th, the week is being celebrated by motor carriers hosting family gatherings, cookouts, giveaways and presenting drivers with awards.

The industry is estimated to consist of 3.5 million professional truck drivers who are responsible for the delivery of 71.4% of the country’s total freight tonnage. Over 80% of communities in the United States rely exclusively on truck drivers to deliver their goods. Without the timely and professional work of truck drivers, businesses and communities alike would struggle to keep their supply chains moving. 

Below are four of the ways carriers and community members are coming together to show appreciation for their truck drivers:

American Trucking Association

The ATA is celebrating National Truck Driver Appreciation Week by hosting Trucking Day at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. where they will recognize notable achievements in the trucking industry from the past year. The event will be followed by FedEx Freight’s professional truck driver Dion Saiz singing the national anthem prior to the Atlanta Braves vs. Washington Nationals game.

Trucking Moves America Forward

Trucking Moves America Forward (TMAF) operates with the intention of creating a positive image for the trucking industry to ensure that policymakers and the population understand the industry’s significance to the economy and support it accordingly. TMAF is showing its appreciation for America’s professional truck drivers through their #ThankATrucker campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. CBS Sports, NBC Sports and other play-by-play broadcasts of professional football will also air TMAF commercials educating consumers on the industry and its essential role in delivering products and goods. 

J.B. Hunt

Trucking company J.B. Hunt is hosting events for its drivers including water parks, theme parks, cookouts and carnival games. They are also rewarding drivers with prizes through Facebook including gift cards, coolers, backpacks, jackets and other apparel. 

Knight-Swift

Truckload and logistics service provider Knight Swift is hosting events for truck drivers at each of their terminals. Activities will include food, games, entertainment and more!

Whether you are a professional truck driver yourself or have one in your life, you have a lot to be proud of! Their role is essential to the success of supply chains worldwide and their impact increases with every delivery made. Kuebix thanks every driver for their hard work each and every day and hopes that everyone enjoys National Truck Driver Appreciation Week!

Fleet Backhaul Management - Kuebix

What You Need to Do to Make Fleet Backhaul Management Easy

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Fleet backhaul management is a notoriously difficult task that fleet owners and operators are all too familiar with. When a truck returns from making a delivery it is usually empty. This is known as “driving empty” or “empty miles.” Even though there is no freight on the trailer, drivers still need to be paid, fuel is used up and trucks depreciate in value. The expense of empty miles are usually calculated into the freight rate ahead of time, but this capacity still presents an opportunity for fleet owners to generate additional revenue for direct bottom-line impact.

Instead of having fleet assets return empty, finding freight to haul on the return trip can create a win-win situation for both the shipper and the fleet owner. Shippers find a new, valuable source of capacity and fleets generate bottom-line revenue. So why has it been so hard up until now to manage fleet backhauls?

Why Traditional Fleet Backhaul Management is So Difficult

Managing a fleet is difficult enough without finding freight to carry on the return trip. When companies do try to generate some additional revenue by filling empty backhaul miles, they can find themselves wasting more time sourcing opportunities than actually moving freight.

Loads Must Meet Certain Parameters

The process of finding available freight is more complicated than simply finding freight that needs to move in the opposite direction the original delivery is headed. There are many other parameters that need to be considered too. Things like Haz-Mat, food-grade and temp control all need to be taken into account. Other parameters like noise regulation or truck size in neighborhoods can also make a difference between a good opportunity and an impossible one.

For example, a truckload order of refrigerated groceries leaves York, PA heading to New York City. After it leaves from New York, the truck typically drives back to York, PA with an empty trailer. The fleet owner looks for a food-grade backhaul opportunity along this route. If they’re lucky, the fleet owner might find a load that needs to travel from Allentown to Harrisburg or even directly back to York. This would reduce the total number of empty miles driven.

Finding Opportunities and Getting Paid Can Be Challenging

This scenario adds bottom-line revenue for the company. But finding that opportunity is easier said than done. It can take an entire team of logistics professionals to source and secure that backhaul opportunity. After the opportunity has been successfully matched with the truck type and other delivery parameters, the fleet still needs a way to invoice for its work and get paid. Doing one-off deliveries for a variety of shippers can be a headache for everyone involved.

Since the process of finding, booking and getting paid for backhaul freight is so difficult and time-consuming, it’s no wonder that many fleet owners decide not to look for backhaul opportunities and stick to their everyday fleet management.

How to Make Fleet Backhaul Management Easy

The answer is to tap into a community.

Fleet backhaul management becomes easy when fleets find and connect with an existing community of shippers and brokers looking for capacity. Instead of individually sourcing loads on a one-by-one basis, fleets instead have a single source to work through. Programs like Kuebix FleetMAX are giving fleets an easy way to expose their available capacity to thousands of shippers while at the same time streamlining the AR/AP process.

Why Kuebix FleetMAX is a Game Changer

With FleetMAX, Kuebix’s technology digitally matches fleet capacity with freight to obtain consistent and repetitive external backhauls to offset empty miles, add revenue to fleet operations, and provide shippers/brokers a new source of trusted capacity.

Kuebix also overcomes the administrative obstacle of charging the shipper and collecting the funds. With FleetMAX, all of the financials and settlements are managed through one of the most trusted names in the industry, Estes Truckload Management, relieving private fleets of these administrative challenges.

After a fleet joins the network through FleetMAX, their open capacity becomes available to Kuebix’s connected shipping community which includes thousands of shippers and brokers looking for capacity. For fleets, this means they can focus on picking up and delivering orders, not chasing opportunities or managing individual contracts with shippers.

Click here to learn more about getting started managing your fleet backhauls with FleetMAX!

Strategic Partnerships Expand Opportunities in Cloud-Based Transportation Communities

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Cloud-based transportation communities are digital networks where companies connect to find opportunities for efficiency and cost savings. These networks are comprised of shippers, carriers, suppliers, brokers, freight forwarders and every other type of company involved in the shipping of freight. On these digital networks, members connect to leverage efficiencies such as finding additional truckload capacity and filling empty fleet miles.

A new eBook, Putting Community in TMS: Enabling the Network Effect in Transportation Management by industry analyst and President of Adelante, SCM, Adrian Gonzalez breaks down how the network effect can be enabled in transportation management. He discusses how network-based transportation management systems (TMS) act as a conduit for shippers to maintain thousands of relationships without needing to manually forge relationships one-by-one with other companies.

“Instead of establishing and maintaining hundreds or even thousands of one-to-one connections, companies make a single connection to the network to communicate and collaborate with their existing trading partners.”

In order to attract the most users and keep them engaged on a routine basis, network-based transportation management systems serve as the operating system for these communities. Shippers are already accessing the TMS for their daily logistics needs and can therefore easily pivot to community-specific features like truckload spot markets and load matching services.

To make these community-specific services enticing and valuable for shippers leveraging the TMS, there need to be a multitude of opportunities flowing into the network-based TMS from the other end. That’s to say, there needs to be extensive available capacity exposed to the community of shippers for opportunities to be found. That’s where partnerships come in.

Kuebix, as the first and only network-based transportation management system, is pioneering this concept. By partnering with external communities and thousands of individual brokers and carriers, Kuebix is able to expose available capacity from all over the supply chain industry to its TMS users.

Partnering with Emerge Private Freight Marketplace

A new partnership with Emerge has enabled Kuebix to rapidly expand the number of opportunities available to its customers in Kuebix Community Load Match, a truckload spot marketplace. Through this partnership, members of the community can tap into Emerge’s Private Freight Marketplace and seamlessly book with thousands of verified carriers without needing to maintain individual relationships.

Partnerships like that with Emerge quickly grow the shipping community and provide users with more opportunities for collaboration. The key is to connect every transportation player through a single system where it is easy to find opportunities for collaboration while simultaneously keeping users engaged with the community, even when they aren’t actively looking for additional capacity.Kuebix and Emerge

 

Kuebix TMS and the Network Effect in Transportation Management

Kuebix TMS was built around the concept of the network effect and is proving the theory in conjunction with transportation management as described by Gonzalez in Putting Community in TMS. As more users join Kuebix’s logistics community by becoming users of the TMS, more carriers, brokers, freight forwarders and other supply chain players can be partnered with to expose available capacity. This creates a snowball effect where when more shippers join to leverage the new opportunities, new partnerships with carriers and brokers can be established to take advantage of more shippers seeking capacity. It’s a win-win for all supply chain players and grows the cloud-based community exponentially.

Currently, there are over 16,000 members of Kuebix’s shipping community and that number continues to grow. The new collaboration with Emerge and other strategic partnerships will continue to drive shippers to the technology, encouraging more partners with available capacity to expose their assets through the technology, and so on and so forth, creating the industry’s largest cloud-based shipping community.

Network Effect Kuebix

Enabling the Network Effect in Transportation Management [eBook]

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According to Adrian Gonzalez, President of Adelante, SCM, Supply Chain Operating Networks are the business equivalent of LinkedIn and Facebook. These cloud-based networks can enable companies to embrace collaboration and realize huge efficiencies. But Supply Chain Operating Networks are few and far between. One of the reasons for this absence is because the majority of technology traditionally used by supply chains have been housed within the “four walls” of individual companies. New SaaS, cloud-based technologies like Kuebix TMS are changing this.

As traditional, on-premises transportation management systems become replaced by SaaS, cloud-based ones, companies have the opportunity to digitally connect with one another via new Supply Chain Operating Networks. Kuebix is the first TMS to fully embrace this concept, with Kuebix’s technology acting as the backbone for a rapidly growing community.

The swift growth of Kuebix’s shipping community is proving the idea that the Network Effect can be used to great advantage in the supply chain industry. With over 16,000 companies in the Kuebix’s shipping network, thousands of suppliers, shippers, carriers, brokers, and other supply chain players are able to connect with one another for new collaboration opportunities.

These opportunities can lessen the impact of tightening capacity, help fill empty backhaul miles and ensure that shippers are always aware of the most cost-effective and customer-friendly options to ship.

Read an excerpt of Gonzalez’s eBook, Putting Community in TMS: Enabling the Network Effect in Transportation Management, to learn more about the Network Effect in transportation and supply chain operations.

Transportation management is inherently a network-based business process. It involves an ecosystem of different parties — a community, if you will, of shippers, carriers, consignees, brokers, and others that need to communicate and collaborate with each other in order to transport products and utilize assets and labor as efficiently as possible.

This transportation community is analogous to the connections and relationships enabled by social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. A big difference, however, is that unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, which are powered by network native software, the transportation community has historically been powered by enterprise-centric software — that is, transportation management systems (TMS) that were designed for, and used primarily by, the transportation function within the four walls of a company.

This fragmented, “inside the four walls” approach makes it challenging to quickly and efficiently match transportation demand with available capacity, as companies of all sizes experienced in 2018. This growing need in the market for better matching of supply and demand, coupled with the rise of cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS), application programming interfaces (APIs), and other emerging technologies, is driving the next evolution of transportation management systems.

Simply put, transportation management systems are transitioning from being “inside the four walls” applications to becoming operating systems that power transportation communities and enable network effects.

Click here to download the full eBook!

 

Uberization of Freight

The Uberization of Freight – Communities in the Logistics Space

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The “sharing economy” is rapidly changing our behaviors as consumers. Uber, Airbnb and Lyft are just a few of the many platforms that are helping people sell, share, and rent their unused assets. The “Uberization” trend is disrupting traditional business models and touching nearly every corner of our lives, and even the logistics industry hasn’t escaped its touch.

With the Uberization of freight comes a variety of tools powered by cloud technology. Shippers are using smartphones and mobile apps to gain access to otherwise-empty trucks while also dealing more directly with drivers (versus just carriers and freight forwarders). These tools are letting individuals and companies communicate dynamically with each other to share assets and make deals. Since these tools are almost universally cloud-based, they aren’t limited to old-fashioned desktop PCs. Instead they go where their users go, from the warehouse floor to the office to the road.

Communities are springing up around these “sharing economies”, adding new levels of usefulness for their members.  For the transportation industry, the Uberization trend is helping shippers connect with thousands of independent drivers that have empty truck space. Despite popular belief, individuals who own and operate their own trucking businesses comprise a large chunk of the U.S. trucking industry. These 350,000 registered owner-operators either lease to carriers or operate under their own authority, which makes reaching and connecting with them extremely difficult. What better way to find independent drivers than through a community that connects directly with them and allows shippers to secure otherwise-unused capacity on their trailers?

This level of Uberization should be a lifeline for shippers that are feeling the impact of the capacity crunch and truck driver shortage. Exacerbated by regulations like the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate and a strong national economy, these challenges aren’t getting any easier for shippers. Much like its pioneering cousin did with personal transportation, the Uberization of freight trend is focused on matching capacity to specific shipper needs. In the not so distant future, it will become the norm for shippers to leverage communities based on the cloud to gain visibility and book freight with an ecosystem of carriers they would never otherwise have had access to. This will help to lessen the impact of the capacity crunch and driver shortage by reducing the number of empty miles driven.

Participating in a community that provides access to an ecosystem of carriers not only enables a high level of load matching, it also streamlines the entire transaction and enables solid shipper-carrier relationships (a must-have in a world where trucks are expensive and hard to come by). This strategy has been wildly successful for Uber, and is demonstrating enormous potential for the logistics industry.

Kuebix Global Logistics Community

Global Online Logistics Community: If You Build It They Will Come, Sometimes

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Over the past decade, there has been a focus in the transportation industry on creating new avenues for finding capacity, getting better rates and improving customer service. To this end, a number of online communities have popped up with the promise of freight savings through matching carrier capacity to shipper demand.

However, over the years many of these communities have failed. Here are 5 reasons:

  1. A focus on spot rates only
  2. No support of negotiated carrier rates
  3. No direct connection to carriers
  4. No sticky factor to keep the shippers coming back
  5. High barrier of entry to get shippers on boarded

Many online logistics communities were originally established as a marketplace for volume spot transactions. A major reason these communities failed was because they focused on just a small piece of the way companies ship freight. On average, 90%+ of freight is booked via negotiated carrier rates, leaving just 10% or less for volume spot rates. Most communities built around volume spot rates alone failed because they didn’t offer access to the negotiated carrier rates that companies use to ship their freight the vast majority of the time.

Many communities also underestimated the importance of long-standing carrier relationships. However, direct connection to carriers was not possible until just a few years ago when carriers began exposing their APIs for rating, booking and tracking on their websites. Now technologies like Kuebix can build direct connections to carriers, allowing companies to view all their carrier rates, book shipments and track freight on one platform.

Communities also need a “sticky factor” to entice members to join and keep them “glued.”  An online logistics community must offer a tool that logistics professionals use every day, like a transportation management system.

Finally, a community must have a very low barrier to entry. Free versions of technology are very appealing for this reason. Think about what would have happened if, when Facebook was started, people were charged to connect to the network and use its features. Because Facebook is free, millions of people were able to join the community without any barriers.

The idea of building a community that offers dramatics savings by matching carrier capacity to shipping demand is appealing, but communities that are not built with shippers’ day to day needs in mind are destined to fail.

Learn more about Kuebix’s Free TMS and the Global Logistics Community. Try our new Freight Rate Calculator.