TECHNOLOGY: POWERING LOGISTICS
FULL VISIBILITY Carriers, 3PLs addressing rising shipper expectations BY AARON HUFF
S
upply chain professionals are carrying their experiences with business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites such as Amazon over to their work lives. “Everybody is expecting shipments to be like Amazon with complete visibility,” said Ryan Rogers, chief transformation officer for Covenant Transportation Group (CCJ Top 250, No. 35), a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based carrier and thirdparty logistics (3PL) provider. The technology expectations of shippers are evolving, forcing 3PLs and motor carriers to meet higher standards. However, meeting customer expectations by using traditional business-tobusiness (B2B) commerce tools such as electronic data interchange (EDI) is becoming more difficult. Freight transactions increasingly are using direct system-to-system integration through application programming interfaces (APIs).
Complying with freight visibility Over the past few years, shippers, 3PLs and carriers have implemented various freight visibility platforms to solve a persistent industry challenge. The platforms converge tracking data from electronic logging devices (ELDs), 54
commercial carrier journal
Meeting new visibility requirements from shippers by using traditional tools such as electronic data interchange (EDI) is becoming more difficult.
back-office systems and mobile applications used by carriers to provide a central dashboard for monitoring shipments in transit. When shippers, particularly large companies, use these platforms, 3PLs and carriers are expected to comply. Cargill Transportation Logistics (CTL) uses a predictive supply chain visibility platform from FourKites. CTL manages about 15,000 shipments a week across North America for Cargill, a Wayzata, Minn.-based global agriculture and food manufacturer. CTL expects its transportation providers to comply with visibility requirements by sending shipment tracking updates to FourKites every 15 minutes. Smaller and less able carriers in its network are expected to send updates every two hours at a minimum, said Jackie Bailey, regional lead for CTL-North America. As an asset and nonasset transportation provider, Covenant also has been asked by shipper customers to meet
| may 2020
visibility requirements. Covenant’s fleet of 3,000-plus power units is equipped with Omnitracs devices that update locations every 15 minutes. Most of the tracking data currently is sent to customers as an EDI 214 transaction set. The requests from shippers to provide data for their visibility platforms requires Covenant to use APIs, Rogers said. Freight visibility platforms are not being used widely by small and mediumsized shippers, said Andy Damkroger, associate vice president of logistics strategy for Omaha, Neb.-based Werner Enterprises (No. 11). However, they expect transportation providers to have a self-service web portal for tracking shipments and other routine transactions, he said. Werner uses EDI to communicate with a number of customers electronically, but Damkroger said the trend is moving quickly toward APIs that provide richer, more accurate data and added functionality.
