Today we’re excited to announce a new real-time fraud detection system that has reduced cargo theft, double brokering, and other forms of fraud in our network by 90%, even as the industry experienced a 41% increase¹. This new system, which we’ve been testing with customers since January, combines machine learning technology, forensic behavioral data, automation, and industry collaboration to monitor risk in real-time, proactively block fraud before it can occur, and more quickly apprehend perpetrators. As a result of this work, we reduced the rate of theft and double brokering in our network to less than 0.001% across hundreds of thousands of shipments in Q2 2023. And at the time of this announcement, we haven’t experienced a single incident of theft in the second half of 2023.

A growing industry-wide problem

Every year, cargo theft costs shippers hundreds of millions of dollars—in 2022, the total value of stolen freight within the US was nearly a quarter of a billion dollars according to CargoNet. This industry-wide problem has only accelerated in recent years, with cargo theft up 57% year-over-year and trailer theft up 17% for the second quarter of 2023. Attacks have also become more sophisticated, with thieves using technology to target high-value loads and often working as part of larger cargo theft rings.

Traditional solutions to fraud prevention fall short in several ways:

1. Over-reliance on onboarding

Vetting carriers during onboarding is a necessary step to protecting against fraud. However, risk at onboarding is a single static data point, while a carrier’s risk profile and behavior can change over time. Effectively evaluating risk requires a more durable solution that relies on real-time data to continuously verify carrier legitimacy.

2. Failure to identify fraud networks

Traditional theft mitigation is akin to a game of whack-a-mole, in which individual actors are pursued for prosecution, but their connections to larger fraud rings can’t be established. A more systemic approach is required to identify these networks and proactively block fraudulent activity across all known members.

3. Insufficient driver data

Fictitious pickups, in which criminals use false identities to pose as legitimate carriers, were up 600% in 2022. Yet most solutions, including prominent industry data sources, lack information about individual drivers, which can be critical in securing check-ins at facilities and mitigating impact when adverse events occur.

4. Impartial assessments

Traditional risk assessments are often black-and-white decisions based on broad blanket policies and arbitrary data that have little correlation with cargo fraud. This results in frequent false positives that stifle the growth of legitimate carriers by blocking them from working with established brokerages. Instead, these carriers often resort to working with less credible brokers, exposing them to non-payments or misdirection schemes.

The problem is made worse by the fact that most fraud prevention efforts today rely primarily on manual process and human analysis, which can’t scale to effectively protect a freight network.

Introducing the industry’s first real-time fraud detection system

Over the last six months, our team has been working in collaboration with Fortune 1000 shippers and industry partners to pilot a unique real-time fraud detection system that addresses these shortcomings. At the core is machine learning technology that continually verifies the trustworthiness of carriers and identifies relationships between carriers, along with a dedicated team that provides decision oversight and input into the model. 

Before a carrier can join Convoy’s network, and once they’ve satisfied mandatory insurance, operating authority, and FMCSA carrier contact verification, they’re run through a proprietary risk assessment model. Borrowing concepts from graph theory and fuzzy logic, and using publicly available and proprietary data, this clustering model identifies latent connections between carriers and their personnel and then makes recommendations based on the risk level of those links. Identifying these connections is critical to preventing fraud since perpetrators often operate in networks or through the use of multiple identities.

Carriers flagged as high risk are immediately blocked from bidding on loads within the Convoy app. Those flagged with potential risk are asked to submit additional information to prove their legitimacy. And all carriers flagged with any level of risk are reviewed by a member of Convoy’s Trust & Security team to make the final decision on network membership. 

Of course, a carrier’s risk profile can change over time. Carriers who appear to be trustworthy during onboarding can quickly evolve into high-risk entities based on economic changes, sales of motor carrier companies, or onboarding of poorly vetted drivers. For this reason, our solution continually vets every carrier in our network multiple times per day before they can accept each load, using data from all interactions Convoy has with the carrier as well as publicly available information. Additionally, Convoy has built a multi-layered driver verification process to validate the accuracy of provided identification, with the capability to provide the validated assigned driver directly to facilities to verify before releasing a shipment.

Once a load has been assigned to a carrier, our systems track every step of the shipment lifecycle, looking for anomalies and proactively alerting our team to any suspicious activity. GPS tracking enables our systems to automatically determine if a shipment isn’t progressing to its destination as expected. Similarly, cargo sensors automatically alert us if a shipment is being unloaded in an unexpected location, enabling us to take immediate action.

Our solution is also an effective defense against the increasing threat of double brokering. At onboarding and throughout the course of their membership in Convoy’s network, carriers are evaluated for attributes typically associated with double brokering, behavior in accessing and navigating Convoy portals, and other attempts to mask their identity. Then, as carriers book shipments, our system evaluates their schedules for practicality. If deemed infeasible or high risk, loads are automatically removed from the carrier. 

Ensuring a positive, fair experience for carriers

In building a modern fraud prevention solution, we knew it was also critical to provide the tens of thousands of legitimate small carriers and owner-operators in our network, including those with new MCs, with a system that doesn’t obstruct the growth of their business. This is in contrast to many traditional solutions, which are often indiscriminate and haphazard in their approach to carrier vetting—using broad policies and arbitrary data to block by default rather than using precise, up-to-date forensic and behavioral data to block only when necessary.

For example, a well-known tactic in the industry is to use DOT inspection count as a deciding factor in whether to block a carrier from accessing their shipments. This unfairly penalizes new carriers entering the industry, as the median time for a small carrier to receive their first inspection is 154 days (more than five months). In addition, Convoy data indicates that just 56% of single-truck carriers are inspected each year, with 75% inspected over a two-year period. Blocking these small carriers based solely on an issue like inspection count unnecessarily stifles the growth of their business and exposes them to increased risks of unscrupulous broker behavior, as noted above.

Our approach was to build a solution that proactively monitors risk in real time, combining the automated decision making model described above with a dedicated team trained to provide technology oversight and to make fair and consistent decisions. We began by modeling behavioral details and other latent attributes that are more directly correlated with fraud than generic data points like inspection counts and location. We then employed custom heuristics to fine tune our recommendation engine in order to minimize the number of false positives.

To further minimize false positives and other similar issues, we designed a human-in-the-loop process where an audit team reviews our model’s decisions when there’s a higher degree of uncertainty. The team follows a thorough standard operating procedure to request additional information from carriers and make a decision on each case. These decisions are then fed back into the model to continually improve future recommendations.

Through these efforts, we’ve created the industry’s first always-on fraud prevention system that significantly improves cargo security without negatively impacting the tens of thousands of hard-working carriers in our network.

The critical role of industry collaboration

The development of our model, mitigation, and reaction techniques wouldn’t have been possible without the trend analysis, data, and products from companies including CargoNet, Central Analysis Bureau, Persona, and others. These organizations exemplify how technology innovation can be used to reduce losses from fraud and foster a greater sense of security and trust within our industry.

In addition, law enforcement continues to play a critical role in the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of bad actors—in the last six months, they’ve tracked down and apprehend members of multiple cargo theft rings across the US. Additionally, law enforcement adjacent professionals, industry groups, and our private investigator partners continue to provide incredible support to the development of industry-wide solutions to combat fraud.

As we continue to navigate the increasingly complex landscape of fraud and cargo theft, we look forward to expanding these relationships, which we believe can ultimately benefit every shipper, broker, and carrier in our industry.

If you’re interested in learning more about how our fraud prevention solution can help your transportation team reduce supply chain risk, drop me a line at trustandsecurity@convoy.com or contact your Convoy account manager.

¹ Convoy internal data comparing H1 2023 vs. H2 2022, CargoNet Quarterly Supply Chain Risk Trends Analysis 2022, 2023

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Traditional dedicated contracts are largely inflexible, with asset carriers allocating a set number of trucks and drivers to a given agreement. The moment any additional trucks are needed, a traditional asset carrier would have to acquire more trucks, hire extra drivers, or relocate existing assets, which could take several weeks or even months.

Dedicated On Demand addresses these challenges through our automated routing technology and network of 400,000+ trucks. When volume surges, we quickly add trucks to the fleet of dedicated carriers and incorporate the additional freight via our algorithm-driven routing technology. And for drop freight, we automatically relocate Convoy trailers to the pickup location within hours. This helps shippers avoid the hassle and cost unpredictability of the spot market.

We know shippers value driver consistency to improve operational efficiencies, and with Dedicated On Demand they see the same carrier at their facilities 90% of the time. Shippers can also take advantage of Convoy Hi-Fi Visibility, which provides detailed, real-time updates on their freight, plus access to on-demand facility insights and benchmarking tools to further streamline their operations. 

Pairing the speed and flexibility that only Convoy can deliver with the service and cost stability of traditional dedicated freight opens up new opportunities for shippers. Dedicated On Demand can be used to cover long-term, consistent freight as well as short-term projects, such as transferring goods between facilities. And with more than 400,000 power units in the Convoy network, we offer the nation’s largest fleet of on-demand tractor capacity for hauling private fleet trailers.

Your ability to be flexible, adaptable, and on time tremendously helped us complete our mission of transitioning to the Atlanta building. Thank you again for being a great partner.”

A Fortune 500 multinational food shipper

If you’re interested in learning how Dedicated On Demand can help your transportation team expand your freight coverage, drop us a line or contact your account manager.

The post Introducing Convoy Dedicated On Demand, the most flexible way to dedicate freight appeared first on Convoy.

Navigating market volatility with technology-driven solutions

Unlike previous cycles, technology has taken on a more prominent role. “In the last three years, there has been an influx of new technology for transportation and procurement and an influx for adoption,” said Hennigar. “We’re seeing more of our shipper customers increasing their willingness to try dynamic pricing solutions like Guaranteed Primary that we have here at Convoy.” A desire for technology-driven programs derives, in part, from the need to stay resilient in the face of volatile market conditions.

As Hennigar discussed, the industry tends to think about the ebb and flow of market cycles in terms of win-loss scenarios. When the market is tight, trucks are hard to come by and when the market is soft, shippers may think that they’re overpaying for freight. In 2020, Convoy launched Guaranteed Primary as an industry-first freight procurement solution that addresses those win-loss scenarios and helps shippers navigate market volatility.

In a tight market, Guaranteed Primary offers 100% tender acceptance. In a softening market, Guaranteed Primary customers realize cost savings without the need to renegotiate contracts due to Convoy rates automatically adjusting as the market shifts. “We collaborate with our shippers and introduce automation to lower some of their costs to serve, accessorials, and incidental costs on a shipment by shipment basis. Those savings are passed on immediately and it’s all automated,” Hennigar added.

When enrolling customers’ lanes in Guaranteed Primary, Convoy stresses flexibility. “We meet our customers technologically where they want to be met, whether that’s through a TMS or directly into their operating system,” said Hennigar. The resulting benefits are huge. Convoy customers enrolled in Guaranteed Primary save an average of 11% on their freight and receive 17% higher tender acceptance.

Staying ahead of the market

To stay ahead in the market, Hennigar recommended three key steps:

1. Diversify your freight procurement profile: It’s not enough to diversify the assets and non-asset providers, shippers need to diversify the freight procurement mechanisms within their network. Having dynamic pricing mechanisms like Guaranteed Primary can help mitigate costs and service disruptions.
2. Raise the expectations for operational visibility: Shippers should have detailed insights into their freight performance, which is why trust and transparency are built into Guaranteed Primary. With monthly performance reports down to the lane level, our customers see their estimated savings and key shipment metrics to improve their operations.
3. Introduce resilience into your network: The more flexibility and elasticity that shippers can introduce into their supply chain, the better. “Whether that’s through a diversification of partners or pricing mechanisms, if you have the right resilience in your supply chain, you’ll be able to forge the future that much more effectively,” said Hennigar.

Getting started with Guaranteed Primary

New to Convoy? Let’s talk about shipping with Convoy and saving more with Guaranteed Primary.

Already ship with Convoy? Get in touch with your account manager.

More resources on how dynamic pricing helps shippers:

• In our webinar, Adapting to Freight Market Softening, learn how industry-leading shippers are driving innovation with dynamic pricing programs while avoiding the inefficient, cumbersome process of renegotiating freight contracts.
• Unlock more savings through Guaranteed Primary: See how a Fortune 50 Retailer’s pilot led to an estimated $1.6 million in savings.

The post Saving big and securing coverage in every market cycle with Guaranteed Primary appeared first on Convoy.

The things we do when we don’t have visibility. Like driving a golf cart through the rain to see how many empty trailers are in the yard. Or losing 40 minutes on the phone chasing a carrier’s location. Or paying $18k in detention a month without knowing why. Or stumbling through a “he said, she said” with your 3PL because of poor facility performance. 

Now, imagine a world where you have real-time visibility into your shipments and yards and detailed analytics on your facility performance. In this world, a dashboard surfaces how many trailers are in the yard. A map shows where the truck is in real time, with notifications that tell you what it’s doing. A carrier’s review reveals that the $18k in detention is because there’s a broken robot in bay 5. In this world, data helps steer conversations and drive outcomes. And it’s right at your fingertips. 

This is Hi-Fi Visibility. A new class of visibility and transparency that our customers tell us they have never seen before — not from any other transportation provider in their routing guide.

Introducing Hi-Fi Visibility, an unparalleled level of depth and insights into your freight

Hi-Fi Visibility provides detailed, real-time updates across drop trailer pools and shipments hauled by tech-connected carriers in Convoy’s network. And it provides robust analytics that improve your supply chain health. 

Hi-Fi Visibility is made possible by three core capabilities. It starts with real-time data collection, which we’ve achieved through industry-leading carrier app use — an unrivaled 97% — across our network. 

Next, machine-learning models enhance the data, layering in real-time data from like shipments to predict delays and disruptions related to the driver, facility, trailer loading, and trailer matching. This way you don’t just know where a shipment is but also what it’s doing throughout the shipment lifecycle. Is the truck dwelling at a facility for so long that it’s putting a later shipment at risk? And the data refreshes every five minutes, improving the accuracy and visibility of ETAs, shipment statuses, and shipment delays as they occur. The result? Transportation teams get an accurate, granular source of truth.

And finally, we’re building tools like our online shipper platform that give customers on-demand access to their shipment statuses and insights in real time. Customers can also access this information within the tools they use every day, through APIs and TMS integrations.

Convoy’s Hi-Fi Visibility capabilities include:

• High-fidelity shipment tracking: Track your freight in real time, with the truck’s GPS location updating every minute. See predictive ETAs and status updates that cover more than 30 detailed reason codes. We’ll let you know if a driver has run into issues at the facility or with the equipment, the shipment, paperwork, and more. Shareable tracking links keep your customers, partners, and leadership up to date when it matters most. 
• Advanced insights and benchmarking tools: Save costs and improve operations with an interactive and on-demand insights dashboard that visualizes trends for more than 40 metrics per shipment, including spend, on-time performance, dwell time, carrier retention, and facility performance. Get ratings and written reviews directly from carriers on the ground. Benchmarking data shows how your facility performance stacks up to nearby facilities.
• A facility dashboard: Track the precise GPS location and status of your Convoy Go drop trailers in real time. See each trailer’s current status — whether it’s empty, loaded, or out of service — along with the trailer’s condition, speed, ETA, actual arrival, time in yard, and theft alerts, as well as future availability so you can plan ahead.
• Out-of-the-box TMS integrations and APIs: Get Hi-Fi Visibility in your everyday tools through integrations like live tracking on the Flexport platform, with more on the way.

Convoy customers can access high-fidelity shipment tracking and advanced insights today via connect.convoy.com. Benchmarking and the new facility dashboard will be available later this fall. Learn more by visiting convoy.com/supply-chain-visibility.

How Hi-Fi Visibility drives results

Reducing email volume, mitigating shipment delays, and improving efficiency

The problem: The tracking and accounts receivable teams at a consumer goods company were sending dozens of emails a day about critical shipments delivering into one of their major retailer-customers. Where’s the truck? What is it doing? Can you send me the bill of lading? 

The process: Instead of chasing information from inboxes and call-downs, the team ran a test. Would Convoy’s high-fidelity shipment tracking and digital bill of lading (BOL) features help reduce its email volume?

The outcome: In two weeks, the tracking team reduced its pre-pickup emails by 34% because Convoy’s high-fidelity shipment tracking starts tracking two hours prior to pickup. Tracking team members also received predictive to-the-minute ETAs and status updates with detailed reason codes, so they knew if a driver ran into issues at the facility or with their equipment, the shipment, paperwork, and more and worked to mitigate shipment delays.

The two teams reduced their overall email volume by 14%. The accounts receivable team printed BOLs directly from the shipper platform. Convoy provides a BOL on every load — the carrier’s payment depends on it. These results compelled the consumer goods company to expand Convoy’s tracking and digital BOL features to the rest of its teams.

Lowering dwell times, reducing detention costs, and improving access to capacity

The problem: At one of its biggest facilities, a manufacturer was experiencing high detention costs because of longer-than-usual dwell times. Also, carriers weren’t placing as many bids on loads for this particular facility in the Convoy app.

The process: Convoy compared drivers’ actual transit times to the facility’s appointment times, which were set by the manufacturer’s 3PL, and made a stunning realization. Drivers were so early for their appointment times that they waited hours.

In one scenario, a driver picked up a load at 9 a.m. and arrived at the facility for a 12:30 p.m. delivery — but the appointment time wasn’t until 6 p.m. He held onto this trailer for close to six hours longer than planned. He didn’t get the most out of his full 11 hours of service that day, which reduced his earnings.

The outcome: Convoy provided lane-by-lane transit recommendations that are now executed by the manufacturer’s 3PL. The manufacturer also lengthened the facility’s hours. These changes reduced excess transit by 53%, pickup dwell time by 60%, truck costs by 18%, and detention costs by 70% — monthly accessorial spend went from $16.3k per month to $4.9k per month, for $11.4k in savings month over month.

Like this case study? Then catch the on-demand webinar, with more details and insights.
Watch Unblocking facility bottlenecks using on-demand insights

TIP: Shippers that respect carriers’ time earn higher facility reviews, according to our Annual Freight Insights Report. And our research has found that 84% of carriers often or always read facility reviews before deciding whether to bid on a load (read: positive reviews improve access to capacity). Later this fall, Convoy’s on-demand facility insights dashboard will reveal how facilities stack up to other competing facilities nearby, with benchmarks extending to on-time performance, facility rating, and others, so shippers can continue to work toward the shipper-of-choice title.

Saving time, reducing email volume, and delivering confidence in capacity

The problem: In cases of unexpected demand surges, the transportation team for a large retailer sent emails and made calls to track down available capacity, costing the team its most precious resource: time. Time that its asset-based carriers used to physically check their yards for available trailers. By the time the team heard back, it had to run the loads as live, using unfamiliar spot carriers at a higher cost. 

The process: Another demand surge brewed a familiar scenario — the need for 10 drop trailers. But this time, the team was leveraging Convoy Go for nationwide drop capacity across primary, backup, and spot. Convoy’s drop trailers have GPS and cargo sensors that provide automated updates on trailer location, loaded status, condition, speed, ETA, actual arrival, time in yard, and theft alerts. This eliminates the need for people to manage trailers on the ground. 

The team looked at its facility dashboard to see four trailers already on site and six inbound trailers on the way within the next 24 hours. With confidence in capacity, the team uploaded a spreadsheet with shipment details for the 10 drop loads, then booked and assigned trailers in minutes — for spot drop coverage without the inflated spot costs. The team tracked 100% of these drop loads in real time on a map, with the truck’s location updating every five minutes.

The outcome: The ability to see current trailer status and upcoming trailer availability will be available to all Convoy shippers through the facility dashboard this fall. This means for upcoming drop shipments, customers can see future trailer availability and make a booking decision in minutes, through the Convoy shipper platform or through their TMS. 

Get Hi-Fi Visibility across your network

New to Convoy? Get a demo and learn more about shipping with us. Let’s talk. 

Already ship with Convoy? Log in to view high-fidelity shipment tracking and insights, or request access to your account today.

The post Radical transparency into shipment status and supply chain health. Introducing Hi-Fi Visibility appeared first on Convoy.

On June 1 and 2, more than 800 Fortune 500 shippers, logistics providers, government officials, and industry heavyweights descended on Chicago to discuss how working together can help transform the industry by focusing on unlocking capacity, driving innovation, and revolutionizing supply chain execution. 

Convoy also attended, participating in a panel discussion on achieving sustainability goals and reducing waste in freight alongside Volvo Group and Bayer. When we weren’t discussing how the supply chain can help the planet, we were jotting down notes and taking names. We didn’t want to miss out on those insights, and we don’t want you to either. 

Across a jam-packed two days of panels and fireside chats, a few themes kept arising that we’re obsessing about at Convoy and believe other transportation teams should be too. 

No. 1: Achieving data visibility and the journey to digitization 

Every company aspires to have end-to-end visibility of their supply chain, and many Reuters attendees, like Wayfair, Bayer, and Mondelēz, have embarked on their journeys to get there. 

In his keynote, “From Cost Center to Brand Differentiator: Enhancing Efficiency & Speed in Logistics,” Sean Halligan, Wayfair’s global chief supply chain officer, shared his team’s ultimate goal: providing consumers at point of sale a 30-minute delivery window for two weeks out. The only way to reach this precise delivery experience is with full visibility, something they’re “constantly working on.” It starts with going digital. 

For Bayer, their digital transformation began six years ago, when the team started implementing a new transportation management system at remarkable scale — across 74 countries.

Facing a digital transformation project of similar scale? Johnny Ivanyi, global head of distribution at Bayer, shared his advice in “How Bayer’s Digital Transformation Journey Brings its Logistics Operations to the Next Level”: First, get your stakeholders engaged and leadership aligned. Break the larger project down into smaller chunks. And change management is hard, so keep people inspired. For instance, they created opportunities for employees to become “super-users,” who get to travel the world inspiring, teaching, and training their coworkers in other countries. 

For Mondelēz International, COVID accelerated their journey to digitization, recognizing that digitizing the supply chain helps unlock better quality data in real time. “It’s easier when you can see [the data] and react to it in real time,” said Andrea Turner, SVP of global customer service and logistics, “and that’s still a hurdle.” Andrea called for more data sharing across the industry in her interactive panel, appropriately named “Balancing Relationships and Technology in Logistics.”

“It’s great to have data, but it’s better to be able to partner with others to use their data too,” she said. “How do we really share that data? How do you move it together? Understanding truth is an opportunity in the collaboration space. That’s a daunting task among our providers.” 

No. 2: Building a more sustainable supply chain 

“The mentality has shifted,” said Perry Jones, president of North America Supply at Diageo. “How do we leave this Earth in a better position for the next generation? It’s a social responsibility, not an economic one.” 

Waste is a problem that every company has today – and must take action to solve. Leaders at Convoy, Bayer, and Volvo talked about how they’re working to be part of the solution, in their interactive panel called “Collaboration: The Path to Greater Success in Achieving Sustainability Goals & Reducing Waste in Freight.”

Ryan Gavin, chief growth officer at Convoy, cited that heavy trucks run 175 billion miles moving truckload freight in the U.S. every year. Of these, 61 billion are empty miles — miles driven by a truck without a load — that contribute more than 87 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually. Every year, 35% of all miles driven are empty miles.  

Gavin talked about how shippers partner with Convoy to reduce empty miles and achieve their sustainability goals: first, by bundling their shipments together for drivers, which reduces empty miles by 45%, from the industry standard of 35% to 19%. Also, shippers that can be flexible with their appointment windows help fit their shipments into carriers’ schedules, reducing carbon emissions by 36%. 

The industry can continue to make larger and more meaningful impacts for our planet by working together. 

“The one thing to take back is not to operate in a vacuum,” Jones said in “The Path to Net-Zero — The Role that Logistics Has to Play,” Diageo’s keynote. “There are partnerships out there, and people are willing to work with each other to solve this. We should be collaborating to get to a better outcome for that next generation. The folks in this room could lead that legacy.”

No. 3: Improving your supply chain resiliency

Dow Chemical, Pfizer, Cardinal Health, Macy’s, and others touched on resilience. In moderating the keynote, “Building Resilience, Agility and Sustainability into Your Global Supply Chain for a Better Customer Experience,” conference host Ryan Patel said resilience has become a buzzword. What does it actually mean?

Dow Chief Supply Chain Officer Greg Jozwiak started with a joke (“I wish I had a dime for every email I received offering me resiliency”) but went on to answer: “It’s about how fast you can recover and convert learnings from past events into your playbook. We will have disruptions. We don’t know what the next ones will be — hurricane season, floods, strikes, trade wars, wars. You can’t anticipate it, but you need a way to recover from it.” 

To be more resilient, Dow invested in its planning capabilities by creating playbooks that help everyone both tenured and new know what to do if a moment calls for a pivot. 

Others talked about being more resilient by avoiding single points of failure in their supply chain. In the keynote, “Resilient Network Design for Peak Season and Beyond,” Megan Evert, SVP of Operations at Flexe, recommended running an analysis to help identify and avoid any single point of failure to maintain business continuity. “All of your eggs in one basket is a huge risk to your network,” she said. “Find your plan Bs.” 

Others recommended avoiding single points of failure across the supply chain by diversifying networks and expanding provider bases.

In the keynote, “Drive Quick & Efficient Fulfillment in the Face of Unpredictability,” Jerry Mujica, VP of America’s Regional Supply Operations & Customer Support, says Pfizer manages two types of unpredictability: fluctuations in demand and routing challenges like weather or damaged products due to temperature sensitivity (you may recall Pfizer manufactures the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine). For the Pfizer transportation team, the key to resilience means working closely with their carrier partners to flex and reroute at a moment’s notice.

Here’s how we at Convoy are thinking about these three themes and how you can too

Achieving data visibility. Building a more sustainable supply chain. Improving your supply chain resiliency. 

At Convoy, we believe building resiliency into a transportation network centers around five operating principles, starting with two of our themes — visibility and sustainability — as well as reliability, flexibility, and efficiency.

We’re constantly working to deliver real-time visibility throughout the shipment lifecycle, most recently announcing on-demand access to next-gen facility insights to drive performance and control costs. Shippers partner with Convoy to reduce empty miles and achieve their sustainability targets — companies have saved more than 8 million pounds of carbon emissions by shipping with Convoy.

You don’t have to make trade-offs to get it all. It comes down to having a freight partner that can help you achieve all five, for optimal performance in any environment. Drop us a note if you would like to learn more, and let’s collaborate on making our supply chains as efficient as they possibly can be.

The post Three key themes from Reuters Supply Chain Execution that your transportation teams should be thinking about appeared first on Convoy.

Why have our incidental costs increased so much? What is going on with the dwell times in San Antonio? It can take shippers months to get to the root cause of problems like these. Without detailed visibility into what’s happening at the facility level, shippers don’t know what they can’t see.

But what if feedback was available across your entire network? What if you could see not only what was happening but also what you could do about it? What if your freight provider came to you and said, “Hey, we noticed a spike in incidentals at one of your facilities, and driver feedback indicates this is because of a broken robot on bay 5. It has cost you $18k in incremental spend in the last 30 days. How much would it cost for you to fix it?”

For this beverage manufacturer with the broken robot, the facility wasn’t reporting the issue to management, and they didn’t know what they couldn’t see — until we surfaced it. Convoy leverages robust data sets from our tech-connected carrier network of more than 400,000 trucks, boosted by an analytics and visualization platform that turns this data into real-time insights.

Starting today, Convoy shippers can get on-demand access to facility insights to help:

• Identify trends that help save costs. Track your incidental spend per shipment for each facility and break out incidentals by type, day of the week, or even time of day. 
• Drive operational performance. Get granular visibility into each facility’s average dwell time and on-time performance, including filters to quickly see the lowest-performing facilities in your network. 
• Get timely carrier feedback. See carrier retention, verbatim reviews, and star ratings for each facility.

Watch this video to hear Abhi Krishnappa, one of Convoy’s engineering managers, tell you more about what’s new.

So how exactly can facility insights help drive performance and control costs? Here are a few real-world examples.

1. Why did my incidental spend jump month over month at my highest volume facility?

The problem: A shipper noticed an unexpected 23% month-over-month increase in incidentals per shipment at their highest trafficked facility.

The process: They looked at the facility’s scorecards and discovered dwell time nearly doubled when volume increased by almost 20% within the same time frame.

The insight: The volume was taxing the facility’s ability to get trucks in and out, increasing dwell times for carriers and therefore detention costs — the number one incidental contributor — to the shipper. The shipper, in partnership with their Convoy account team, decided on a solution: a combination of load balancing and rerouting shipments to other facilities.

TIP: Dwell time is the single most important determinant of facility rating, according to Convoy’s Annual Freight Insights Report. Long wait times frustrate carriers, who make a living moving freight, and can end with bad reviews like “had to wait 3 hours for what was supposed to be a preloaded trailer. Never picking a load from here again.” According to Convoy research, negative facility ratings can increase the rate per mile from 5% to as much as 20%.

2. How can I reduce detention costs at this problematic facility?

The problem: A shipper struggled with bottlenecks and backups at their loading docks, but anecdotally, they couldn’t point to any specific problems or patterns. 

The process: Data within the incidentals scorecard of their dashboard showed detention started to increase at 1 p.m., reached its max point between 2 p.m. and  3 p.m., but returned to normal by 6 p.m. With these times of day, the shipper and Convoy together looked at shipment volume and detention costs, uncovering that they were paying an extra $40 per load, on more loads, during their peak hours from 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

The insight: Convoy recommended the shipper shift some of their morning picks and drops to the afternoon and evening, which was projected to save up to $150,000 per year.

TIP: The most commonly used words in one- and two-star reviews tend to be “wait,” “time,” “hours,” “slow,” and “long.” A suggestion from our Annual Freight Insights Report: Build processes and make improvements that get carriers in and out. Some customers put funds aside for extra dock space. Others, like in the case above, optimized appointment times for their busier days. Others provided more communication and extra signage so carriers know where they should wait, park, and drop trailers.

3. How much more efficient are my drop shipments compared to my live shipments? What would the budget impact be if I shifted more loads to drop?

The problem: This shipper wanted to convert more live loads to drop-and-hook but needed to better understand their live versus drop performance before making the switch. They knew drop as being the most efficient way to ship but couldn’t quantify the difference — Convoy’s insights dashboard could.

The process: The shipper simply toggled between drop and live loads to discover that, although both live and drop shipments were performing better than the industry average, their drop incidental frequencies were half of live’s, and the average incidental per load shipped was 34% less for drop.

The insight: By increasing the shipper’s load allocation to flexible drop, which provides nationwide drop capacity across primary, backup, and spot, from 6% to 25%, the shipper’s estimated cost savings totaled nearly $86,000.

TIP: Another benefit of converting more live loads to drop loads — drivers prefer them. According to our analysis of carrier reviews for our Annual Freight Insights Report, “easy” was the 7th most common word in facility reviews for drop loads in 2021 but ranked 64th for live loads in 2021. Also, drop loads received more five-star reviews than live loads did. 

4. Why do I have excessive dwell times at this particular facility?

The problem: For this shipper, facility insights helped expose excessively long dwell times for both pickup and drop-off, along with the resulting detention costs.   

The process: Convoy’s analytics team compared the driver’s actual transit time to the facility’s appointment times, with a stunning realization. Drivers were arriving so early for their appointment times that they were waiting for hours. For example, a driver picked up a load at 9 a.m. and arrived at the facility for delivery at 12:30 p.m. — but their set appointment time wasn’t until 6 p.m. The driver held onto this trailer for close to six hours longer than they needed to.

The insight: The shipper’s 3PL managed planning and transit time planning — and the shipper didn’t know about these transit inefficiencies (and their resulting operational and cost impacts). Convoy provided lane-level optimized transit recommendations that led to the shipper expanding their facility hours, implementing our recommended transit time (that their 3PL now executes), which reduced excess transit by 57.3% and pickup dwell time by 57.1%. 

TIP: Carriers can haul up to 11 hours a day, as permitted by hours-of-service regulation, but Dr. David Correll, a research scientist and lecturer at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, estimates that long-haul truck drivers spend, on average, 6.5 hours per day working. “This implies that 40% of America’s truck driving capacity is left on the table every day,” he said in his testimony for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The industry as a whole needs to be better about respecting carriers’ time, and according to our Annual Freight Insights Report, facilities that are successful earn the highest reviews.

Facility insights brought to you by the nation’s most tech-connected carrier network

Our vast network of small carriers and owner-operators totaling more than 400,000 trucks nationwide provide meaningful insights through the Convoy app. We require app usage to haul loads — this is how we provide GPS tracking on 95% of live loads and 100% of drop loads. It’s how we collect robust data around dwell times, detention costs, and more. To date, we’ve captured more than 2.7 million facility reviews in the Convoy app. 

As you’ve read, facility insights and carrier reviews help distinguish a well-functioning facility from one that needs improvement.

Shippers use facility insights to improve their own operational performance and the facility experience for carriers. They can better their chances of becoming a shipper of choice and actually improve their access to reliable capacity. When used wisely, facility reviews and ratings can become a competitive advantage. 

Shippers aren’t alone in finding this data invaluable; carriers do, too. For Convoy specifically, 84% of carriers often or always look at ratings and reviews before moving forward with a bid on a Convoy load. Positive ratings and reviews can compel drivers new to your facility to give it a try. For you, that means securing new reliable capacity can be the difference between “I hope to continue working with them” and “Never picking a load from here again.”

Tap into facility insights with Convoy

New to Convoy? Get a demo and learn more about shipping with us. Let’s talk. 

Already ship with Convoy? Log in to view facility insights or request access to your account today. With every shipment, facility insights are being updated on your insights dashboard.

The post “The robot in bay 5 is broken”: 4 ways you can use facility insights to drive performance and control costs appeared first on Convoy.

Flexport Chief Operating Officer Sanne Manders says it’s a good time to re-think your supply chain. “Instead of holding onto old patterns and wisdom,” he says, “maybe it’s time to rip things out and think ‘clean sheet.’” 

Historically, ocean and over-the-road (OTR) shipping have shared challenges: manual operations, a lag in tech adoption, and little to no real-time visibility. Flexport is the modern freight forwarder, using technology to help shippers manage today’s complexities of global shipping. 

Sanne leads operations, procurement, and carrier relations, but more simply, he’s known as Flexport’s digitization expert. We caught up with him to talk about how technology is helping shippers create a more efficient and resilient supply chain of the future. 

A: Let’s start with a question on partnership, in the spirit of Convoy and Flexport partnering to deliver end-to-end visibility from ocean to over the road. In what ways do you believe global shippers and supply chain partners could better collaborate to drive a healthier and more efficient supply chain?

S: You want to start with the customer. Our customers want visibility and control of their supply chain, and as a platform for global trade, we work to deliver that value for them. We do it through collaboration. For example, we partner with other freight forwarders to serve our customers in countries where we may not yet have a footprint. In fact, close to 70% of Flexport’s shipments start with another freight forwarder. We opened that ecosystem to them because it helps us, and they get a lot of business because of it. It’s a win-win. When you focus on the customer, everything you do is about creating these win-win propositions. The old mindset is thinking it’s a zero-sum game. The modern brokerage focuses on creating value for both customers and carriers. When the customer wins and the carrier wins, we win as well because it makes our platform stickier.

A: You mention “the modern brokerage.” Historically, brokerage services in both ocean and OTR have been inherently transactional, relying on manual, siloed processes that are both inefficient and error-prone. What qualities or characteristics must supply chain partners have to be that strategic advisor and help shippers navigate the uncertainty of the future?

S: Supply chain partners should have a willingness to try new things and constantly improve. If we don’t experiment, we will just create a digital copy of the old world. Our goal should be unlocking new opportunities through data. This can only happen when you fully digitize your supply chain so you can get better quality data in real time. 

Digitization is key. Humans should apply their judgment and problem solving; automation should do anything repetitive and transactional. Eliminate the manual processes that create waste. And you can’t get to the promised land with half of your partners still using those manual processes, email, and spreadsheets. Be sure you bring everybody along.

A: The cloud, Internet of Things, and machine learning all amass incredible amounts of data and visibility and empower us to make decisions more quickly. How can technology help create a more resilient supply chain? How do you believe technology will change the future of supply chains?

S: In 2014, supply chain leaders told me digitization was a nice-to-have. Today, everyone agrees it’s a necessity. You need real-time information to make good and fast decisions in our complex world. This comes down to the OODA loop: 1) Observe through data, 2) Orient or problem solve, 3) Decide, and 4) Act. Do this faster and faster and you will become more resilient and out-compete anyone else. 

To run that OODA loop quickly, you need a central database for data storage. You can’t do that if you have an old AS/400 system from the ՚80s, so make the investment in your infrastructure every five to six years. Our platform was seven years old, so we made the decision to maintain our existing platform while we build a new one in parallel. 

A: As you’ve mentioned, digitization helps shippers be more agile in their decision making, so they’re prepared no matter what comes their way. How else can supply chains be more prepared to handle ongoing volatility?

S: Everything is currently under pressure with lots of constraints, but the big wild card is how demand will evolve in the near future. Leading indicators show it’s slowing. If consumer confidence starts changing and people start to buy more services than goods, you might get a slowdown of global trade and possibly a bullwhip effect because we have so much inventory. Market dynamics could look very different a year from now.

To be resilient, be realistic in your expectations and plan for volatility. If you keep fighting the state of the industry, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage. Optimize for what is materially impacting your business instead of trying to fight it, and make sure you have the right logistics providers to help you do it. There will always be chaos — as we’ve seen, all we need is another boat stuck in the Suez Canal. When that happens, you want a problem solver that can offer you options.

A: How do you think this has impacted the way shippers are building their supply chains and transportation networks?

S: It’s a good moment to re-think. Instead of holding onto old patterns and wisdom, maybe it’s time to rip things out and think “clean sheet.” Imagine what this new world could look like for you — and then enlist freight providers like Convoy and Flexport to help you build it.

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post A Conversation with Flexport’s Sanne Manders appeared first on Convoy.

Clinging to traditional patterns and practices of contract freight has become an increasingly large liability in the world of volatile supply chains. So what can we do about it? Our customers are leaning into new approaches starting with their most problematic freight. You can too.

The fundamental flaw of traditional freight contracts

The RFP is a cornerstone of the freight procurement process. For high-volume shippers, it provides a foundation for annual budgeting. Its resulting contracts are meant to provide transportation teams with reliable, quality capacity, budget predictability, and operational savings.

At the same time, the RFP process takes months to complete and costs millions in operational expenses each year. Even after contracts are signed, they quickly break down. In tight markets, tender rejection forces transportation teams into their routing guides, where they spend thousands of hours manually sourcing capacity at higher rates. In soft markets, shippers renege on volume commitments, spending operational hours to find cheaper rates on the spot market, at the risk of working with unfamiliar, lower-quality carriers.

Regardless of market conditions, the RFP creates a zero-sum game that pits shippers against brokers and carriers, establishing a relationship founded on mistrust. Within six months, much of the effort that went into the RFP is moot, with half of all negotiated contract rates or tender acceptance levels no longer being honored. 

The pandemic has further highlighted the fundamental flaw of traditional freight contracts — they attempt to assert control and predictability over an unpredictable freight RFP market. And because of this, they invariably fail to deliver on their promises.

The broken promise of reliable, quality capacity

Without RFPs and contracts, every shipment would be subject to the spot market. There’d be no guarantee of coverage, and transportation teams would work with many carriers who aren’t experienced in hauling their freight.

RFPs hold the promise of providing reliable capacity, binding carriers to a shipper throughout the contract term and improving service quality through greater carrier consistency. Yet in tight markets, this promise is quickly broken. When contract rates expose carriers to sufficient financial risk, they reject tenders and gravitate toward the more profitable spot market. As a result, shippers fall back into their routing guide or spot, where they’re more likely to work with unfamiliar carriers, receive lower-quality service, and face higher risk of service failure.

An analysis of data from FTR, DAT, and FreightWaves shows a strong correlation between tender rejections and the difference between contract and spot rates. As spot rates climb further and further away from contract rates, tender rejections increase in tandem.

A look at 2019 data from one Convoy shipper shows that even in soft markets, spot surges can immediately follow RFP agreements and drive up costs as carriers fail to meet volume or rate commitments.

A new approach to sourcing primary freight

In 2019, Convoy began to pilot a program called Guaranteed Primary. It set out to deliver on the key promises of the RFP without the overhead of running a months-long procurement event. The program officially launched in September 2020 and allowed our customers to participate in a dynamically priced contract agreement that guaranteed tender acceptance.

How Guaranteed Primary works

1. No RFP overhead

When a shipper uses Guaranteed Primary for any particular lane, they completely eliminate the need for an RFP. Instead, the shipper agrees to allocate all volume on the lane to Convoy.

2. A low fixed margin rate

In contrast to traditional contracts that set a fixed rate per mile, Guaranteed Primary establishes a fixed margin over the course of the contract — this margin can be up to 50% lower than the industry average of 15% to 18%. On each load, shippers pay a dynamic rate generated by Convoy’s predictive pricing algorithm. The rate is visible prior to tendering, which delivers pricing transparency upfront and removes the need for budget reconciliation.

3. 100% tender acceptance

As the shipper tenders loads to Convoy, we guarantee acceptance by tapping our nationwide network of more than 400,000 trucks. And through the use of an automated bidding system, carriers compete to haul loads, ensuring that our customers always get capacity at competitive rates.

4. Unparalleled transparency

Throughout the process, Convoy provides pricing transparency, sharing our truck costs for every shipment. Each month, customers receive an insights report detailing the estimated savings they’ve received comparing their actual costs to what they would have spent using an RFP or the spot market.

5. Shippers can cancel at any time

If a customer is unsatisfied with the program for any reason, they can cancel at any time.

Isn’t this just a cost-plus program?

At first glance, Guaranteed Primary looks a lot like a traditional cost-plus program. Although both programs make use of a fixed margin, there is an important difference. Cost-plus programs are backward looking, whereas Guaranteed Primary is a predictive (future-looking) program. 

With cost-plus, transportation teams don’t have access to accurate carrier costs at the time of tendering. Instead, shippers just receive an invoice after delivery. This leads to operational headaches and unexpected costs because shippers are expected to reconcile the actual carrier costs for every shipment.

By contrast, Guaranteed Primary is based on Convoy’s predictive pricing models. When transportation teams tender their freight (e.g., daily, weekly), Convoy generates a rate that predicts our costs to source the truck. Our pricing is based on machine learning models that get smarter with every shipment. And we take on the liability of our predictive rates being accurate. When our rate predictions are off, we shoulder the financial burden, eliminating the need for any billing reconciliation.

Start with your most volatile freight

Customers have tested Guaranteed Primary across a wide range of scenarios, including with their most problematic freight. I’m proud to share that at the time this article was written, every customer we’ve onboarded to the program is still using it today.

When the industry tender rejection rate was hovering around 25% in Q3 2021, Convoy accepted 99.997% of Guaranteed Primary loads.

This is strong evidence that our network is resilient and reliable even during periods of extreme volatility. 

While we’re still in the early days of this monumental shift away from the win/lose dynamic of traditional RFPs, the easiest place to start evolving your contract strategy is with your most volatile freight. Instead of lumping your “problem” freight into your RFP, consider carving it out as part of an intentional move into a program like Guaranteed Primary. Here are some of the top qualifiers you can look for within your freight portfolio based on what’s been working for our customers.

1. Stockout avoidance (or anywhere you really need to guarantee service)

One of our large retail customers was struggling to keep products in stock with a typical tender acceptance of just 15% on surge freight. When they began using Guaranteed Primary, tender acceptance shot up to 100%, allowing them to realize millions of dollars in revenue by keeping shelves stocked.

2. Just-in-time manufacturing or inventory management

Some of our customers don’t have the luxury of advanced planning. Despite having an average lead time of only 24 business hours, we eliminated the need for spot and serviced more than 350 problematic lanes for a multinational auto manufacturer. They were previously experiencing rejection rates of up to 30%. But with our elastic carrier network, we have covered 100% of loads while meeting the strict OTP and OTD requirements inherent with the coordinated relays of just-in-time manufacturing.

3. Low-volume lanes or low-lead-time freight

Low-volume and low-lead-time freight typically experiences high tender rejection rates and relies more heavily on the spot market. Our customers are putting this freight into Guaranteed Primary to reduce costs while improving service. One customer’s analysis demonstrated a 16% savings on truck costs for the lanes they moved to Guaranteed Primary, and an estimated $90,000 savings on administrative costs by avoiding the spot market.

Overall, we’re seeing positive shifts in the market, indicating a collective effort to modernize contract freight. Mini-bids are more common. Technology is making traditional RFP processes less cumbersome and manual. And other freight companies are evolving their existing cost-plus programs to more closely mirror Guaranteed Primary.

Now’s the ideal time to start running your volatile freight through a dynamic pricing program. Guaranteed Primary customers will benefit from even more cost savings by riding rates down in soft market conditions. Beyond these financial benefits, our customers tell us that the improvement to service quality alone is enough reason to make the switch. Regardless of market conditions, dynamic pricing programs like Guaranteed Primary are well positioned to take substantial volume from spot and traditional contract markets in the future by creating more balanced freight portfolios that benefit both shippers and carriers.

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post Stop Wasting Your Time Putting Volatile Freight in RFPs appeared first on Convoy.

Today, U.S. Fortune 500 shippers move the majority of their freight through preloaded drop trailers. Many of them would move even more of their freight as drop-and-hook loads if they could. Some would forgo live loads altogether.

Transportation teams prefer drop for its flexibility. Facility workers prefer it because they have a much wider time window for loading and unloading trailers. Carriers prefer it because it helps improve their productivity. In running our own nationwide drop-and-hook program since 2019, we’ve seen average carrier load and unload wait times drop from three hours to under 30 minutes, which in turn lowers detention fees for shippers. And the Environmental Protection Agency says drop helps reduce carbon emissions by eliminating hours of tractor idle time.

If drop benefits shippers, facility workers, carriers, and our planet, why aren’t we moving more freight this way? Unfortunately, the operational constraints of traditional drop programs have made this unfeasible. In recent years though, machine learning and automation have enabled an entirely new breed of drop program that operates with a level of flexibility and efficiency never before possible. This opens the question of whether all freight could one day be drop-and-hook. To answer that question, let’s start with what’s traditionally held us back. 

Constraints of traditional drop-and-hook

Drop-and-hook freight is substantially more complex than live loads. With drop, you need to match each shipment to an available trailer and a separate tractor. To do that, you need to know where all your trailers and tractors are, and you need to be able to route them to the next pickup as efficiently as possible.

Carriers have traditionally addressed this problem manually — with people on the ground and on the phone chasing assets. The process is time intensive, error prone, and operationally expensive, limiting drop service to large asset-based carriers, running on dense lanes with predictable shipment volume. This is also why drop has been used almost exclusively for contract freight.

But even with the relative predictability of contract freight, shippers incur unexpected costs with traditional drop programs. When tender volume exceeds forecast, transportation teams are forced to supplement with live loads, increasing operational costs and reducing the efficiency of their supply chain. Live loads not only introduce logistical hassles with appointment scheduling and additional labor requirements, but they also increase service quality risk through unfamiliar carriers sourced on the spot market.

Conversely, when tender volume dips below contract expectations, trucks stop moving. Carriers address lower fleet utilization with punitive fees, either charged directly to shippers or indirectly by passing along their higher fixed costs. 

When spot market spillover and punitive fees are accounted for, the inefficiency and inflexibility of traditional drop programs cost shippers 9% of annual freight spend on average:

$9.5 million for a shipper that moves 250,000 drop loads a year

$37.4 million for a shipper that moves 1 million drop loads per year

This ongoing cycle of spot market spillover and punitive fees has always been part of traditional drop, creating undue burden and risk for transportation teams and constraining the potential of this otherwise highly efficient form of shipping.

A new breed of drop-and-hook enabled by technology

Building toward a future in which all freight is drop-and-hook requires that we first overcome the limitations described above. In 2019, we took the initial steps by launching a new type of drop program called Convoy Go.

The program flipped traditional drop-and-hook on its head in several ways. First, it opened up high-quality drop shipments to every carrier in our digital freight network. With more than 400,000 trucks, we solved one part of the drop equation — always being able to match a shipment to an available tractor. And through our unique quality and compliance program, we could deliver service quality on par with the industry’s top asset-based carriers.

But what about trailers? Over the last three years, we’ve developed a new kind of drop trailer network, enabled by machine learning and automation technology. It eliminates the inefficiencies of traditional drop-and-hook programs by providing nationwide capacity for primary, backup, and spot loads, and it enables facilities to operate at peak efficiency regardless of fluctuations in demand. Here’s how it works.

Smart trailers

Every trailer in our network is equipped with internet-connected sensors that provide insights into the asset’s location, condition, and status. This eliminates the need for a large team of people to manage trailers on the ground. 

The trailers report their location using GPS and geofencing, so we can track 100% of our drop loads en route. We not only see where the trailer is but also how fast it’s moving and, with the help of machine learning models, when it’s expected to arrive. Additional sensors and proprietary software tell us whether the trailer’s loaded, what it was carrying previously, and what it’s slated to carry next. We can even determine whether a trailer has been stolen, an increasingly important capability as cargo theft has accelerated in recent years. With the increased visibility offered by smart trailers, you never have to wonder about the location and status of your shipments. 

These sensors also give us a detailed view into your facility yards. We can see how many trailers are parked in the primary and overflow lots, each trailer’s parking spot, whether the trailers are empty, and which are ready to be unloaded or dispatched. While asset carriers rely on dedicated equipment teams to manually check trailer status, Convoy Go provides this information automatically and without manual inaccuracies or the overhead costs of a dedicated team.

Trailer rebalancing

Supply and demand between facilities and cities is rarely equal. You might have a lot of freight going from Los Angeles to Phoenix, but few loads headed in the reverse direction. This leads to trailers piling up in cities with high demand. Traditional drop programs address this by deploying a surplus of trailers and constraining each trailer to a closed loop between two facilities. This is an inefficient use of trailer capacity and results in higher operating costs.

We’ve taken a different approach using machine learning technology. Each day, our machine learning models route trailers to where they’re needed in advance of the next pickup. As part of this, Convoy Go trailers are shared across our customers — a universal trailer pool that flexes with shippers’ fluctuating demand. Doing this at a nationwide scale involves analyzing billions of permutations to identify the most efficient route for every tractor and trailer. We account for loads that have already been booked, and we can reliably predict our customers’ future trailer demand weeks in advance.

The result is that we can find a trailer for our customers’ drop shipments 99.9% of the time. And in almost every instance, we deliver the trailer more than 24 hours in advance of preload.

Automated Reloads

Automated Reloads enable drivers in our digital freight network to automatically match their headhaul with a backhaul, earning more money on each run while achieving better truck utilization. For shippers, these reloads reduce carrier cancellations by roughly 10%, and they significantly reduce carbon emissions from empty miles. We’ve been offering this capability on live loads since 2019, and we recently introduced automated reloads for drop shipments as well. 

In the example here, the carrier drives approximately 55 miles empty — 45 miles between Portland, OR, and Salem, OR, to pick up the backhaul, and an additional 10 miles between Bellevue, WA, and Seattle after dropping the backhaul. This is compared to driving approximately 175 empty miles from Portland to Seattle had we not found a backhaul shipment.

By bundling multiple shipments together, Convoy helps carriers reduce their carbon emissions from empty miles by 45%. As of April 2022, Convoy has saved more than 8 million pounds of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.

So could all freight one day be drop-and-hook? 

I believe we’re on a path to enabling the vast majority of freight to move in drop trailers. We’ve laid the foundation with a more efficient, flexible, and sustainable drop program in Convoy Go.

The next step is to further unlock trailer capacity. This isn’t simply a function of accelerating new trailer production, although trailer manufacturing will need to recover to some degree, potentially aided by new, more accessible construction materials. The more immediate opportunity, though, is to unlock latent capacity in idle assets — estimates are that 20% of trailer fleets sit unused on any given day.

This will require industry collaboration across shippers, carriers, digital freight networks, trailer manufacturers, and drop yard providers to build a truly universal trailer pool across the 4.8 million trailers currently in service. We’re already pursuing this vision, and we’re looking for innovative, forward-leaning partners to join us.

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post Could All Freight One Day Be Drop-and-hook? appeared first on Convoy.

Technology has turned Thomas Singletary’s Tithing Transport into a top-performing carrier, helping him grow his business and give back to his community. Of more than 3 million truck drivers on the road today, 90% are small carriers and owner-operators just like Thomas. Are you tapping into this capacity?

Small carriers are the backbone of the American supply chain. More than 90% of the nation’s 3 million truck drivers are small carriers and owner-operators running six trucks or fewer. Yet, they often face greater challenges than their larger counterparts, such as lack of access to quality loads from enterprise shippers, uncertainty about where their next job will come from, and unfair financial treatment.

But this is changing. Technology is improving their quality of life and affording them the same opportunities as large trucking companies. When given such opportunities, small trucking companies leave a lasting impression on the industry and their communities. One such company is Tithing Transport LLC, owned by Thomas Singletary. 

As the son of a truck driver, Thomas was introduced to the industry early and officially earned his CDL in 2005. But after seven years of driving, in 2012, Thomas fell on hard times. He faced mental health issues and experienced homelessness. He stepped away from driving. “When I was at my lowest, there were people who didn’t even know me who showed kindness and tried to help me turn my life around,” he said. “And it lit a fire under me to find a way to give back to others who were also struggling.” 

With the support of his community, Thomas worked to get back on his feet. He found a job and started saving. It was his now-wife who convinced him to get back on the road. Thomas started over with a small box truck running local loads. Eventually, he upgraded to a 53-foot trailer, then another one. With the hiring of a second full-time driver, Tithing Transport was born in 2015. Since then, Tithing Transport has grown to five trucks and eight employees.

“Without today’s technology, we would not have been able to grow the way we have,” Thomas said — words that pack a punch considering he knows what it was like from the days of his father driving. Bidding on desirable lanes, planning routes weeks in advance, ensuring his backhauls are full, and monitoring driver performance have all fueled his growth. “One thing that is incredibly helpful about Convoy’s technology is that I can view our carrier scorecard and share feedback with my drivers,” said Thomas, “so we can continue to improve our service and gain access to even more loads.” 

Tithing Transport is a high-performing carrier with Convoy, maintaining 100% app usage, high on-time pickup, and zero cancellations. This high performance isn’t an anomaly. Convoy’s digital freight network monitors performance in a way that traditional brokers and carriers can’t, and automatically rewards higher performers with a better win rate on the loads they bid on. It creates self-reinforcing behavior that improves the quality of the entire network. 

Despite Thomas’ success, he never forgot the kindness he was shown at his lowest. “The name Tithing represents the idea of giving back to my community, and that’s what I hope to do through my business and community service.” As he saw facilities sending imperfect shipments — water, granola bars, personal care products, and more — to landfills, Thomas knew there was a better way. “Why send products to the landfills when they could be used to help people in our communities?” He began working with shippers to donate the items. “Shippers have the opportunity to do the right thing,” he said. They also get tax benefits from their donations. Now, when he gets an imperfect shipment, Thomas contacts the shipper and offers to donate the goods to food banks and other donation sites in the San Antonio area, the most impoverished major city in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

It can be easy for large shippers and brokers to overlook carriers like Tithing Transport. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not account for owner-operators in its monthly jobs reports. But owner-operators and small carriers are the answer to today’s capacity constraints, and digital freight networks like Convoy are bridging the gap. When given opportunity and resources, small carriers deliver for shippers because truck driving isn’t just a job; it’s their livelihood. For Thomas, it’s his life’s work.

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post Carrier Spotlight: Thomas Singletary appeared first on Convoy.

Since Convoy started seven years ago, I have challenged our teams to use technology to improve trucking and shape the future of freight to benefit carriers, truck drivers, shippers, and the environment. I believe that technology, alongside capable operators, has the power to deliver this type of win-win-win. Over the last decade, connectivity has become ubiquitous, matched with cloud technology that effectively removes data capacity, processing power, and scale limitations. As we’ve applied these capabilities to instrumenting, coordinating, and automating freight across millions of truckers, we’re increasing productivity, facilitating industry collaboration among shippers, carriers, and brokers, and eliminating the empty miles so prevalent in historical freight methods. 

We are in the early days of technology improving trucking — our work is only just getting started. Here’s to seeing what problems we can work together to solve next.

1. True elastic capacity

The only supply chain constant is volatility. Whether it’s a backed-up facility, a swing in demand, moves outside normal patterns, or a full-on market swing, transportation teams are constantly fighting to maintain service levels.

We have invested in creating this elasticity — the real-time ability to dynamically activate trucks, trailers, and drivers to match needs — to provide a high level of service to customers and absorb the swings they experience in their business. For example, over the past several years, our Convoy Go program has become the most flexible trailer option on the market. To achieve this, we use technology to continually analyze the number of trailers customers need at a given facility to satisfy upcoming loads. Our systems automatically route and rebalance thousands of trailers and trucks across a geography to ensure customers always have what they need. This elasticity lets facilities operate at peak efficiency, despite unexpected levels of demand.

2. Guaranteed coverage

In a fragmented industry where capacity and service levels are inconsistent, shippers maintain relationships and solicit bids from dozens or even hundreds of carriers in order to have redundant options, even in a small region or on a particular lane. Despite this significant undertaking, coverage can still be unreliable, and reacting to routing guide failure is a regular challenge for every transportation team. 

Guaranteed coverage will become a reality for shippers, and they will receive game-changing benefits. Coverage failures will become rare, dramatically simplifying procurement and operations. Systems will become more tightly integrated, and processes at facilities like dock scheduling and loading will be optimized. All of this results in significant savings on the total cost of freight.  

At Convoy, we operate a network that reaches tens of thousands of owner-operators and small trucking companies every day — fully automated and larger than the traditional approach. Through this network, Convoy can match the needs of our customers in any market condition. Customers adopting Convoy’s Guaranteed Primary program are already receiving these benefits today, including keeping products on shelves, transparent pricing, and cost savings. 

3. Connecting all freight with all drivers

90% of America’s truck drivers are owner-operators or employed by small businesses with fewer than six trucks. These entrepreneurs are the backbone of the American supply chain, yet they face challenges not shared by larger counterparts: lack of access to quality loads from large shippers, uncertainty about consistent work, and unfair financial treatment. 

As the industry continues to adopt new technology, small carriers will have access to the same protections and opportunities as large trucking companies.

Convoy’s app empowers drivers to service loads from the largest shippers, proactively plan their routes to know when they’ll be home with their families, and create schedules that keep their truck full and earnings predictable. Even at seven years in, it’s still very early, with much more potential to better learn preferences to help drivers and small businesses make decisions on the most impactful options.

4. New frontiers to drive down total costs

Transportation is no longer just about getting trucks. Transportation teams increasingly rely on insights gathered from analyzing tender practices, facility operations, driver feedback, and more to increase efficiency and drive down costs. There’s still a lot to do to make this data easily accessible, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Traditionally, fragmentation in freight has made it one of the most challenging links to integrate in supply chain management. Digital freight networks like Convoy have systems orchestrating every step of the shipment lifecycle with real-time connectivity from tenders and spot boards all the way to the inside of trailers and the cab of each truck. There is incredible potential to optimize inventory, warehouses, orders, and more by providing signals into shipper systems delivered through real-time APIs, not humans. Today, some of Convoy’s customers run their daily list of orders through our systems, where we are using our signals to consolidate orders into fewer trucks and more efficient routes with lower total costs. This is one benefit of dozens we will discover in the years ahead.

5. Self-driving trucks team up with human drivers

The adoption of self-driving trucks will take many years to be fully realized. I believe one of the first places we’ll see this applied is expanding the 11 hours of service drivers get today. As autonomous driving technology matures, drivers will be able to hand off navigating the highway portions to the vehicle so that the human driver can go off duty, rest, and reset their hours of service.

As self-driving trucks enter the market, we will see years of mixed fleets containing traditional and autonomous trucks of varying degrees, as well as mixed rules and regulations for fleet operators to follow. Whether a truck can drive autonomously will vary by its load, technology, location, current weather conditions, traffic situations, etc. Doing this effectively will require technology and techniques like machine learning and AI to consider these variables and optimize. This will be a big opportunity for Convoy and an exciting area to partner in.

6. No empty miles

Waste benefits no one — it’s bad for carriers, shippers, and the environment. Today, 90% of S&P 500 companies invest in and report annual corporate sustainability goals, up from 20% a decade ago. In March, the SEC announced a climate disclosure proposal tying greenhouse gas emissions and indirect emissions to risk management. As sustainability continues to gain momentum in modern business practices, freight logistics represents a massive, largely untapped opportunity in sustainability. 

With 35% of all heavy-duty truck miles still being driven empty, technology-driven freight operations will become a meaningful and measurable contributor to companies’ sustainability goals. If the industry can achieve the same efficiency improvements that Convoy has seen on bundled shipments, it would reduce carbon emissions by 40 million metric tons annually. That’s the equivalent of taking more than 8.6 million passenger vehicles off the road for one year, or planting 661 million tree seedlings that grow for 10 years.

If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll push to make sustainable logistics procurement a first-order priority and put an emphasis on any freight companies eliminating empty miles. 

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post The Road Ahead: 6 Ways Technology Will Enable the Future of Freight appeared first on Convoy.

Jacinda Duran is a third-generation truck driver who spent her childhood on the road — today, driver life looks a little different. Known as Lady Truck’n to her fans, Jacinda shares her cross-country adventures with more than 65,000 followers (her “Truck’n Fam”) on social media. Her voice as a female truck driver has earned her coverage with Yahoo! Finance, Women In Trucking — even as presenter at the 2020 Emmys. We caught up with her on a recent stop in Florida to chat about what it’s like to be a woman in trucking, her tips for how shippers can improve their facility experience, and more. 

On being a woman in trucking

I’m a third-generation lady truck’n. I grew up with strong female role models in the industry [Jacinda’s mom drove for 23 years, her grandmother for close to 50!], so I was never hesitant to get into this line of work. But I understand that not every woman has that experience. Safety is an obvious concern. I’m aware of the risks, but I’m not scared of them. I’m all about being warm without being welcoming. And I take precautions to make myself feel safer. I’ll stop early to shower, so when I get to wherever I’ll spend the night, I don’t have to get out of my truck. Despite the safety concerns, I’ve seen an increase in female truckers in recent years. I think women, myself included, like the independence and freedom of driving. 

We’re seeing this too, in data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Effectively all of the growth in trucking industry payrolls over the past two years has been due to women: Since the eve of the pandemic, employment of women in the trucking industry is up 15%, whereas employment among men has been roughly flat. 

On driving during the pandemic

The world stood still and went home, but truck drivers had to keep going. It felt like truck drivers were the last to know about everything. When I’m on the road, I’m not watching TV or the news. I felt very unprepared. We would arrive at shippers or receivers, and they would ask where our masks were, but we hadn’t received any PPE yet. 

The pandemic elevated how isolating this industry can be. For a lot of drivers, the only human contact you get is during your stops at shippers and receivers. All of a sudden, we weren’t allowed to enter the facilities. Restaurants and rest stops closed. We had a hard time getting access to bathrooms or showers. But we couldn’t go home; we had to keep working. That’s why I was honored to present at the Emmys and show the world on behalf of truck drivers everywhere all the essential work that we were doing in the pandemic. 

On technology in trucking

New technology is evolving the industry. The best part about working with companies like Convoy is the convenience — just getting on [the app] and booking a load. Everything is tracked, so we don’t have to call and check in the way my parents and grandparents had to when they drove. If you’re professional, on time, and perform well, you have access to prime loads from the beginning. We have more communication with dispatchers, shippers, and receivers, but also with our families and friends back home. If I want to visit my kids [Jacinda is mom to Mariah and Shane] or family, I can find loads to where I want to go.

On ways to deliver a better facility experience for carriers

People at facilities have a big impact on the carrier experience. It can be easy to corral truck drivers because we’re all there to do a job, but I would ask that shippers do their best to recognize that we are people, too. Getting a smile or being referred to by name are small things that can make a big difference. 

One of my biggest struggles is finding overnight parking. I often have to reserve a spot; otherwise lots are full before I get there. It would be great if shippers offered more parking or worked with nearby lots to help carriers on their loads secure parking. And with more women truck drivers out there, shippers can help accommodate by offering clean women’s bathrooms — not just port-a-potties — and making sure lots are well lit at night. If I’m going to a facility I’ve never been to before, I’ll look at Convoy’s reviews to make sure I’ll feel safe and comfortable before I bid on the load. 

According to Convoy’s Annual Freight Insights Report, the characteristics of a top-performing, 5-star facility include: 

1. Service, which is a combination of the people who work at the facility and how enjoyable and communicative they are.
2. Short to no loading dwell times
3. A tie for third, between short to no wait times at the gate and trailer pool location
4. Amenities, which can mean restrooms, port-a-potties, or truck stop benefits
5. Parking

On building her Truck’n Fam 

This job can be very isolating since you spend most of your days in a truck by yourself. That’s part of the reason I started sharing my journey on social media — to connect with people and build community. I love when I run into people on the road who know me from social media. One follower told me that I inspired her to get into trucking! I was lucky to have strong female role models in my mom and grandma, and by sharing my story I hope to be that for other women. 

Keep in touch with Jacinda Lady Truck’n on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post Carrier Spotlight: Jacinda Duran appeared first on Convoy.

How has the recent supply chain disruption driven you to think differently about the supply chain and/or your business?

Ongoing Demand Disruption meets Supply-side Congestion

Karl Siebrecht, CEO & Co-founder of Flexe

“Supply and demand disruptions are colliding. On the supply side, recent congestion stems from production and inventory delays, capacity constraints, and labor shortages. At the same time, there is ongoing demand disruption from shifting consumer buying behaviors. Retailers and brands are caught in the middle. 

Rigid supply chains don’t help. Rather than building, leasing, or contracting logistics services, businesses are sidestepping traditional warehousing solutions and buying logistics services programmatically. Through targeted programs, they open up an entirely new world of strategic options for distribution or fulfillment.

Recent congestion isn’t necessarily making us think about our business differently, but we are helping our customers approach their supply chain differently. With programmatic logistics, they can flexibly expand and evolve their networks and capabilities in spite of growing ambiguity, constraints, and disruptions in the market.”

Extreme Market Conditions require Better Supply Chain Strategies

Brad Benbow, Business Growth Investments at Ardagh Group

“The supply chain constraints over the last two years have made it clear a formal supply chain strategy is a must. Supply chain strategy has always been a passion of mine, and the extreme market conditions we’ve been dealing with presented the opportunity to think differently and test new approaches. I began thinking about the most volatile areas — spot market loads, port congestion, warehouse utilization, etc. — and how we can limit our exposure in those areas to create value for the business and our customers while reducing impact to the bottom line. I’ve also spent a lot of time on network utilization by looking at our logistics network comprehensively and identifying areas where we could be more efficient without compromising service.”

Shippers Automatically Diversifying their Portfolio of Freight Networks

Aniket Pangarkar, Principal Program Manager, API Integrations at Convoy

“In response to high primary tender rejections and record spot prices over the last two years, shippers are strategically segmenting their networks to better balance price competitiveness, stability, and service quality for different segments of their freight portfolio.

Specifically, we see shippers moving away from fixed freight contracts for all their lanes and deploying a portfolio of contracted and dynamic pricing programs. For example, leading shippers are augmenting their contracted primary and backup rates with API-based dynamic backup rates.  

This provides shippers access to instant elastic capacity at competitive prices, especially when it’s needed to address supply chain disruptions caused by demand spikes, extreme weather conditions, changes in supply networks, etc. This also allows frontline employees to spend less effort on sourcing last-minute capacity and instead focus on resolving the most complex of disruptions.”

This story originally appeared in Convoy’s “The Future of Freight,” featuring 40 thoughtfully curated pages on supply chain disruption, freight procurement, market volatility, and more.

The post Flexe, Ardagh Group, and Convoy talk supply chain disruption appeared first on Convoy.

Over the next decade, the $1 trillion that companies spend each year to truck freight around the country will shift from traditional, offline approaches to digital-first strategies. These smart systems are easy to use, full of rich data insights, and optimized by machine learning algorithms. This pattern of digitization has played out in nearly every other industry, and it’s happening in trucking right now.

The trucking industry links more than 100,000 shippers across the domestic supply chain with a diverse base of more than 1 million carriers and 3 million drivers. It operates in silos with minimal data, opaque pricing, millions of empty miles, and lots of waiting around. This system no longer keeps up with the dynamic requirements of a healthy supply chain.

Trucking is shifting to connected, transparent, and data-rich systems that efficiently orchestrate across shippers, carriers, drivers, trucks, trailers, docks, yards, and more. Carriers and drivers experience higher truck utilization, fewer empty miles, and less wasted time. Shippers benefit with better reporting, more visibility, and real-time pricing and decision-making at lower total costs.

Freight Trucking in the New Digital Supply Chain

Convoy has spent the last seven years building this future of trucking for our customers by connecting small carriers and owner-operators onto a digital platform. This unique access to capacity and a rich stream of data for every load allows us to rethink how we run our trucking services and leads to countless innovations. We aren’t letting up anytime soon, and our recent announcement shows that some of the best investors in the world are behind us. Here are six critical areas in the transition to digitally-driven freight solutions.

1. True elastic capacity
2. Guaranteed coverage for contract freight
3. Democratizing access to freight to maximize efficiency – all carriers and owner-operators available for all freight
4. Reducing total costs with the data and insights generated from transportation
5. A ‘No empty miles’ mindset
6. Self-driving trucks teaming up with human drivers

1. True elastic shipping capacity

The one thing we can always count on in a complex supply chain is volatility. Whether it’s a backed-up facility, a swing in demand, moves outside normal patterns, or a new phase of the freight market cycle, transportation teams are constantly working to maintain access to high-quality service, reliable capacity, and fair prices.

We have invested in creating true elasticity — the real-time ability to dynamically activate trucks, trailers, and drivers to match needs — to provide a high level of service to customers and absorb the swings they experience in their business. For example, over the past several years, our Convoy Go program has become the most flexible drop & hook trailer option on the market. To achieve this, we use technology to continually analyze the number of trailers customers need at a given facility to satisfy upcoming loads. Our systems automatically route and rebalance thousands of trailers and trucks across a geography to ensure customers always have what they need. This elasticity lets facilities operate at peak efficiency, despite unexpected levels of demand. 

The investments we’ve made over the last seven years – in more than 50 machine learning models, predictive trailer routing, and automated backup and spot services for drop freight – provide the foundation for this future, enabling transportation teams to quickly flex their capacity in ways never before possible.

2. Guaranteed coverage for contract freight

In a fragmented industry where freight capacity and service levels are inconsistent, shippers maintain relationships and solicit bids from dozens or even hundreds of carriers to have redundant options, even in a small region or lane. Despite this significant undertaking, coverage can still be unreliable, and reacting to routing guide failure is a regular challenge for every transportation team. 

It’s critical that guaranteed coverage and its game-changing benefits become a reality for shippers. Coverage failures would become rare, dramatically simplifying procurement and operations. Systems would become more tightly integrated, and processes at facilities like dock scheduling and loading would be optimized. All of this would result in significant savings on the total cost of freight.  

At Convoy, we operate a network that reaches tens of thousands of owner-operators and small trucking companies every day — fully automated and more extensive than the traditional approach. Through this network, Convoy can match the needs of our customers in any market condition. Customers adopting Convoy’s Guaranteed Primary program are already receiving these benefits today, including keeping products on shelves, transparent pricing, and cost savings. 

Over the last 18 months, market volatility in freight RFPs has accelerated the shift toward this future state. Freight providers increasingly offer alternatives to the standard freight RFP tools and processes, and shippers are adopting dynamic pricing programs with guaranteed coverage, including Convoy’s Guaranteed Primary and Dynamic Backup.

3. Democratize access to freight to maximize efficiency – all carriers and owner-operators available for all freight

90% of trucking companies have fewer than six trucks and hundreds of thousands of drivers are owner-operators of their own rigs. These entrepreneurs are the backbone of the American supply chain, yet they face challenges not shared by larger counterparts: lack of access to consistent freight and high-quality, high-volume loads from national shippers, an inability to secure efficient drop and hook freight, or attractive dedicated or contracted runs, and opaque or unfair financial treatment. 

As more small carriers and owner-operators use technology platforms to plug into freight opportunities and plan their schedules, they will gain access to the same opportunities and safeguards as large trucking companies. Convoy’s app empowers drivers to service loads from the largest shippers, proactively plan their routes to know when they’ll be home with their families, and lets drivers create schedules that keep their truck full and earnings predictable. It’s still early; there is much more potential to help drivers and small businesses make decisions on the options that impact them most.

Since 2015, Convoy has been building toward this future. Programs like Convoy Go provide small carriers with access to more efficient and lucrative power-only loads. Hassle-Free Detention and QuickPay help carriers get paid quickly and easily. TruckYeah Savings provides financial economies of scale that enable carriers to save on fuel, factoring, and equipment. And through Convoy for Brokers, carriers have more ways to maximize utilization with loads from other 3PLs that have adopted Convoy’s platform to cover their demand. 

4. Reducing total costs with the data and insights generated from transportation

The data and insights generated through freight transportation create substantial value beyond the transportation of goods. Transportation teams increasingly rely on insights gathered from analyzing tender practices, facility operations, driver feedback, and more to increase efficiency and drive down costs. These insights are just the tip of the iceberg.

Digital freight networks like Convoy have systems orchestrating every step of the shipment lifecycle with real-time connectivity from tenders and spot boards to the inside of trailers and the cab of each truck. There is incredible potential to optimize inventory, warehouses, orders, and more by providing quick and accurate signals through real-time APIs, not human transcription. 

Today, some of Convoy’s customers run their daily list of orders through our systems, where we use our signals to consolidate orders into fewer trucks and more efficient routes with lower total costs. This is one benefit of dozens our industry will unlock in the years ahead.

5. Support sustainability in freight transport with a ‘No empty miles’ mindset

Waste benefits no one — it’s bad for carriers, shippers, and the environment. Today, 90% of S&P 500 companies invest in and report annual corporate sustainability goals, up from 20% a decade ago. In March, the SEC announced a climate disclosure proposal tying greenhouse gas emissions and indirect emissions to risk management. As sustainability continues to gain momentum in modern business practices, freight logistics represents a massive, largely untapped opportunity in sustainability. 

With 35% of all heavy-duty truck miles still being driven empty, technology-driven freight operations will become a meaningful and measurable contributor to companies’ sustainability goals. If the industry can achieve the same efficiency improvements that Convoy has seen on bundled shipments, which was shown to reduce the average empty miles of participating carriers from 36% to 19% (a 45% reduction), it would reduce carbon emissions by 40 million metric tons annually. That’s the equivalent of taking more than 8.6 million passenger vehicles off the road. 

Since our founding in 2015, Convoy has been a pioneer in sustainable freight. We’re leading the transformation toward a more sustainable future of freight through investments in technology like automated reloads, multi-load batching, and efficient appointment windows.

6. Self-driving trucks team up with human drivers

The mainstream adoption of self-driving trucks is many years away. As autonomous driving technology matures, the first way this technology will benefit the industry is by allowing trucks to run longer than the current limit of 11 hours of service per day that drivers must follow. Drivers will remain in the truck, but be able to hand off navigating the highway portions to the vehicle so that the human driver can go off-duty, rest, and reset their service hours (read more about my thoughts on self-driving trucks and human drivers here).

As self-driving trucks enter the market, we will see years of mixed fleets containing traditional and autonomous trucks of varying degrees, as well as mixed rules and regulations for fleet operators to follow. Whether a truck can drive autonomously will vary by its load, technology, location, current weather conditions, traffic situations, etc. Doing this effectively will require technology and techniques like machine learning and AI to consider these variables and optimize. This will be a significant opportunity for Convoy and an exciting area to partner in.

This shift in fleet management is a natural fit for digital freight networks like Convoy. The machine learning investments we’ve made in automated brokering and asset rebalancing are the foundation to managing the mixed fleets of the future.

The road ahead

This change is happening today, and I’m grateful for all our stakeholders’ involvement. To our drivers, dispatchers, transportation planners, logistics managers, procurement officers, supply chain executives, brokers, and partners – your insights and feedback continue to drive the work we do every day. 

The post America Needs a Digital Supply Chain and Trucking is Next appeared first on Convoy.

a significant challenge for the freight industry has always been having contract pricing tool for freight RFPs because neither party, the shipper or the carrier/broker, is financially obligated to deliver on what was agreed to at the time of the contract. This lack of obligation occurs because shippers can’t perfectly predict the number of loads they will need to move when, and carriers and brokers can’t predict truck and labor prices. COVID provided a perfect example of this challenge. 

Volatility in Freight Contract Pricing

When COVID first hit, truck rates were highly volatile as consumers stockpiled goods and different states and sectors of the economy turned off and on again. Then, rates increased rapidly for over a year, causing many of these annually contracted truck rates to become outdated. Some of these contracts began to unravel – shippers needed more capacity in different places than they had forecast and trucking carriers and brokers either struggled to find capacity at the contracted rates or opportunistically went after the then-current higher rates. Having seen this pattern in other boom and bust freight cycles, Convoy created a new type of contract pricing program to handle volatility without compromising service. 

Dynamic Contract Pricing for Freight Shippers

Guaranteed Primary launched in September 2020, allowing our customers to participate in a dynamically priced contract agreement that guaranteed tender acceptance. The first program of its kind, it also enables users to see rates at the shipment level before tendering through a predictive pricing algorithm and provides complete transparency into our costs every month through reports and business reviews.

To say this caught the industry’s attention is an understatement. One of our employees’ LinkedIn posts about this innovation became the epicenter of an industry debate on how to approach the problem. Many 3PLs and carriers were skeptical that it could work or be better than the status quo. However, many others saw something they liked.

It turns out that both were correct.

Dynamic Contract Pricing Solves Different Problems with the Freight Industry’s Traditional RFP Process

Freight is complicated. Each shipper, each lane, and each market condition present different problems that can be solved with different types of contract pricing. In some situations, Guaranteed Primary wasn’t the best fit, but it turned out that in many situations it was. The first set of shippers to adopt the new program were urgently trying to find stable trucking support, and Guaranteed Primary offered an efficient solution. Many others also wanted to secure a contract that would adjust down as the market softened, as it is doing today. Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

• 18 months after launch, every customer we’ve onboarded to the program is still using it today. 
• When the industry tender rejection rate hovered around 25% in Q3 2021, Convoy accepted 99.997% of Guaranteed Primary loads.
• Demand is accelerating for the program from both new and existing customers – with load volume nearly quadrupling and the number of lanes serviced doubling in the last year.
• Guaranteed Primary is an excellent fit for shippers with high rejection rates, low safety stock, out-of-stock, and just-in-time manufacturing or inventory scenarios – especially in tight markets.

Over the past year, I’ve spoken with several Guaranteed Primary customers to better understand their experience.

Benefits of Dynamic Pricing vs. Contract Pricing

1. Dynamic contract pricing drastically improves service levels and helps avoid out-of-stock scenarios.  One of our large retail customers struggled to keep their products in stock, with a typical tender acceptance on surge freight at 15%. When they began utilizing Guaranteed Primary, tender acceptance shot up to 100%, allowing them to realize millions of dollars in revenue by keeping shelves stocked. Additionally, they saw on-time pickup improve from 14% to 86% when combined with our drop program.
2. Digital freight networks deliver excellent coverage for low lead time freight. Some of our customers don’t have the luxury of advanced planning due to their supply chain operations. Despite having an average lead time of only 24 business hours, we eliminated the need for spot and service over 350 problematic lanes for a multinational auto manufacturer. They were previously experiencing rejection rates of up to 30%. But with our elastic carrier network, we have covered 100% of loads while meeting the strict OTP/OTD requirements inherent with the coordinated relay/handoff nature of just-in-time manufacturing.
3. Everyone benefits from transparency, fair prices, and guaranteed capacity. When the market swings after the ink has dried, traditional contracts result in a winner and a loser – one reason why they’re so often broken. By providing transparent reporting and detailed reviews with our customers, we can grow a healthy business with positive margins, provide a fair price to our shippers without the hassle of tender rejections from broken contracts, and keep our carriers earning competitive wages.
4. Cost savings for shippers are real, even in tight markets. Our customers have done the math. They’ve compared our rates to industry averages at the lane and shipment level, and we’ve been able to save them money in real-world scenarios. One customer recently told me they’d saved 16% in truck costs with Guaranteed Primary and an estimated $90,000 savings on administrative costs by avoiding the spot market.
5. A new set of award criteria is emerging. Previously, shippers haven’t had easy access to additional data to evaluate incumbent providers against new providers. It’s been a game of “the asset or broker you know vs. the one you don’t,” but that isn’t the case anymore. As technology becomes a core part of the industry, shippers can pinpoint areas that matter most to their business: where our network has the strongest overlap, our performance on lanes and facilities they ship into and out of (or similar), and where they are best served with traditional contracts vs. dynamic pricing, as well as live or drop. I am grateful that our technology can support these asks and speed award decisions as we partner with our shippers to become more efficient in planning cycles.

Overall, we see positive shifts in the market, indicating a collective effort to modernize contract freight. Mini-bids are more common. Technology is making traditional RFP processes less cumbersome and manual. We’ve even seen other players evolve existing cost-plus programs to more closely mirror what we created. I believe we’ll soon see dynamic contract pricing programs take substantial volume out of the spot and traditional contract markets to create more balanced portfolios that benefit all players.

Today our customers are putting more volume into Guaranteed Primary, anticipating even more cost savings as the market softens. They’ve also told us the service improvements alone were enough reason to make the switch. We’re still in the early days of this monumental shift, but I’m excited as ever about the opportunity and the road ahead.

The post 5 Ways Dynamic Contract Pricing is Helping Shippers appeared first on Convoy.

Shults attributes this recognition to various Convoy teams being able to come together and drive impact. “The Home Depot sees value in innovative and timely solutions that improve the efficiency of their supply chain,” Shults said. “They challenge us to do so within their existing infrastructure versus reinventing the wheel.” 

Innovation and Timely Solutions Amidst Market Volatility

Over the last four years, Convoy and The Home Depot have partnered through two extremely volatile periods for the freight industry. During 2018-19, the freight market was one of the softest periods in recent memory, whereas 2020-21 was one of the tightest.

The Home Depot fosters a culture of collaboration and has a high appetite for innovation and experimentation. Because their freight is seasonal, they were interested in experimenting with dynamic pricing on contract freight to capture additional capacity during seasonal surges throughout the year at fair prices. In 2019, they were one of the first to pilot Convoy Guaranteed Primary, an industry-first pricing program that guarantees 100% tender acceptance for a low fixed margin.

Given the nature of The Home Depot’s freight (e.g. lumber, power tools, and appliances), loading and unloading can be a hassle because the freight tends to be bulky and heavy. Thus, The Home Depot deploys drop trailers extensively throughout its network, which allows carriers to get in and out quickly without waiting for live loading and unloading. Convoy was able to offer The Home Depot a flexible drop-and-hook solution with its own trailer pool and power-only drivers through a program called Convoy Go. By deploying Convoy Go, The Home Depot could scale trailer capacity up or down as needed, to match volatile demand, which proved critical throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Following a successful pilot, The Home Depot awarded Convoy its outbound retail freight, which in the past was only reserved for asset carriers.

Collaboration and Experimentation

Through consistent collaboration and experimentation, Convoy and The Home Depot have been able to address challenges head on by leveraging technology to stay ahead of the curve. 

“By leading with a start-with-the-customer mindset, we were able to innovate deliberately and experiment with new solutions that raise the bar for consistent high-quality service.” Shults said. “It is truly a “One Team” effort. You’d be hard pressed to find a team at Convoy that has not contributed to the success of being an innovative partner. We’re excited for what’s ahead as we continue to build on our longstanding partnership with The Home Depot.” 

The post The Home Depot Awards Convoy 2021 Digital Carrier of the Year appeared first on Convoy.

Today, we launched three new features that take this real-time visibility one level deeper while helping shippers save time:

• An improved Shipments dashboard that gives real-time visibility into driver ETAs and exceptions with reason codes, eliminating the need for load update emails
• A tool that locks in instant quotes for up to 24 hours and lets you tender in your own TMS
• A new locations filter within the Insights dashboard that allows you to drill into operational and performance metrics by facility

You’d be hard pressed to find this end-to-end visibility anywhere else, and it’s all because our shipper platform is built on top of the most tech-connected network in the nation. It’s how we deliver to-the-minute tracking on 95 percent of loads. 

Watch this video to hear Conrad, one of Convoy’s product managers, tell you more about what’s new.

See driver ETAs and exceptions with reason codes in real time

There are many ways to track a truck’s location: a provider’s own mobile app, a phone’s location services, ELDs, TMS platforms, and even more. And since not all providers require that drivers use any one of these tracking methods, they also offer another option — drivers can call in and leave their location update with a person, who manually records the information. 

We have to wonder: Is this real-time tracking? Is it true visibility? Tracking across platforms and people makes for inconsistent and inaccurate tracking data. And today, visibility isn’t just about where the truck is — it’s about what the truck is doing, and if there’s an issue, what your provider is doing about it. 

At Convoy, tracking is centralized around our GPS-enabled app, which is how carriers engage with us. This is how you can track Convoy shipments in real time on a map. It’s how you can extend that real-time visibility to your customers and facilities with shareable tracking links.

And starting today, you can get real-time visibility into driver-late exceptions. You’ll not just be able to pinpoint where your truck is on a map, but why it’s late (mechanical breakdown, delay from previous stop, and beyond) and what your dedicated customer experience team at Convoy is doing to resolve it.

Updates are available here as soon as Convoy receives them, so both your team and ours are on the same page. This means no more emails asking for load updates. And if you’d also like to automatically receive these notifications, send us an email at load-status-reports@convoy.com, and we’ll get you set up.

But wait, there’s more! The other feature we’re launching today is an improved Shipments dashboard, now providing detailed ETAs for all of your Convoy shipments. When you can see in real time, you can plan ahead. Check out the Status column to see what’s new. 

Alright, ready for the next feature?

Lock in instant quotes for up to 24 hours and tender in your own TMS

Many shippers use email to gather and compare spot quotes from multiple providers, then, when it comes time to tender loads, they’ll use their TMS or another system. We wanted to make this process a little easier. 

Say you’re in the process of collecting quotes. You start with Convoy and get an instant quote with guaranteed coverage, but you want to see what other providers are pricing the lane at. Since you’re not quite ready to book, simply choose “Save for Later” to lock in that quote for up to 24 hours.

When you’re ready to book, you can come back to the Convoy website to tender your saved quote or snag the quote ID number, which you’d then use to tender the load through your own TMS. You can customize the quote ID number to follow your own naming convention, too. 

Drill into operational and performance metrics by facility

Now, you can see operational and performance metrics by facility, using the new locations filter within your Insights dashboard. Those metrics include shipment volume, rate per mile, spend across spot and contract shipments, Convoy’s on-time pickup and delivery, accessorial spend, dwell time, and more.

Analyze facility performance to maintain positive ratings and reviews from carriers in the Convoy app. Forward-thinking shippers use facility insights to become a shipper of choice and improve access to reliable capacity in any market. An important stat: 84 percent of Convoy carriers “often” or “always” look at reviews before booking a load at a facility they aren’t familiar with.  

The ability to capture these metrics, along with carrier ratings and reviews, is just another benefit of our shipper platform being built on top of the most tech-connected network in the nation.

These features are available now 

New to Convoy? Let’s talk. 

Already ship with Convoy? Log in to view these real-time visibility features or request access to your account today.

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Over the past six years, Convoy has built the most tech-connected carrier network in the nation. Today, more than 300,000 trucks move with our GPS-enabled app, which captures more than 1,000 data points on every load and sends facility insights to shippers in real time. 

2021 highlights from across our digital freight network include:

• Shippers received to-the-minute tracking on more than 95 percent of live loads and 100 percent of drop loads. 
• Carriers have now provided more than 2.7 million facility reviews and ratings (and 40,000 emojis!), which shippers use to improve their facility operations.  
• Together, shippers and carriers avoided more than 775,000 empty miles and saved more than 2.7 million pounds of carbon emissions by shipping responsibly with Convoy. 

Now, we celebrate. Our first-ever year in review honors how each of our shippers got ship done in a year like no other. They’re receiving a hyper-personalized, data-driven look at shipment history and empty miles avoided with Convoy’s digital freight network in 2021. It’s hitting inboxes today.

The data within each year in review is just a sliver of the data shippers can access on demand in their insights dashboard, but it offers transportation teams a chance to look in the rearview mirror and celebrate all of the ship they got done with Convoy in 2021. 

What’s inside the year in review

Each year in review is unique to each shipper and unique to 2021. They can see: 

• Completed shipments – Shipments successfully delivered to their destinations.
• Miles driven – Miles driven by Convoy carriers to deliver a shipper’s freight. 
• Unique carriers – How many individual carriers moved a shipper’s loads, no matter how many times they did it. 
• Empty miles avoided – Empty miles prevented through our automated reloads program, which automatically batches full truckloads for greater efficiency.
• Carbon emissions saved – Amount of carbon in pounds saved as a result of those avoided empty miles. 
• Unique lanes – How many individual lanes a shipper ran with Convoy, no matter how many times we shipped on the lane.
• Network of trucks – Convoy shares each load to thousands of qualified carriers through our app. This number represents how many carriers viewed or bid on a shipper’s lanes. 
• Top lanes by volume – A shipper’s top three lanes by volume, which will include the pickup and delivery location and the number of shipments moved along each.
• Top-rated facility and star rating – Based on written reviews and star ratings provided by the carriers that delivered into a shipper’s facilities. More on this below.

To receive a year in review, shippers had to have moved 50 loads or more with Convoy in 2021.

A look at facility reviews and ratings

The year in review celebrates a shipper’s top-rated facility and its star rating, as nominated by the carriers on the ground. Every carrier has the opportunity to share in the Convoy app a written review and star rating of their facility experience. 

Carriers give the highest reviews to facilities that respect their time. That’s one of the insights we talk about in Convoy’s 2021 Annual Freight Insights Report, highlighting 2021 freight trends and facility insights from Convoy’s more than 2.7 million written reviews and star ratings.

Forward-thinking shippers look to facility insights as their competitive advantage. Convoy shippers can contact their account manager for a deeper look at their facility operations, or log in to their insights dashboard to see performance on dwell times, accessorial spend, and more.

Reduced carbon emissions in 2021

Each year in review shows a shipper’s direct impact on eliminating empty miles and reducing carbon emissions. Because a Convoy year in review wouldn’t be complete without highlighting our progress toward our mission to transport the world with endless capacity and zero waste.

Collectively, Convoy’s digital freight network avoided more than 775,000 empty miles and saved more than 2.7 million pounds of carbon emissions in 2021. This is progress toward a more sustainable supply chain. And yet, with each passing year, the trucking industry generates more than 72 million metric tons of carbon emissions through empty trucks. 

We have a long way to go to #NoEmptyMiles. Here’s to making every mile count in 2022.

Want your year in review for 2022? Get started today with Convoy 

New to Convoy? Get started.

Already ship with Convoy? You may have a shipper account created. You’ll just need to log in or request access. 

The post Data-driven 2021 year in review shows how Convoy shippers #getshipdone appeared first on Convoy.

Danny Gomez, Managing Director of Financial and Emerging Markets at FreightWaves and host of Net-Zero Carbon, recently sat down with Dennis Raffa, Program Lead of the Zero Waste World Initiative in North America for CHEP, to discuss how a pallet company founded in Australia during World War II is actively helping to create a “Zero Waste World.” 

Danny and Dennis discussed what CHEP does as it relates to the supply chain, challenges CHEP faces with regard to the supply chain both pre- and post-COVID, and how CHEP and Convoy are partnering to eradicate empty miles and ultimately create a Zero Waste World.

THE CHEP BUSINESS MODEL: CHEP helps customers move the most products and the most platforms across the globe. We are in over 60 countries working with top manufacturers and retailers where we have cooling platforms and regenerative platforms. CHEP was started back in World War II in Australia when the US Army had left pallet platforms, and a gentleman by the name of Walter Brambles had the bright idea of reusing these pallets in the shipping industry. Today CHEP is the global leader in re-leased pallet containers of all sizes. CHEP goes out and issues pallets to raw material suppliers and manufacturers who put products onto the containers and CHEP sends these pallets out to customers who then produce onto them. They will then send them downstream to retailers at the consumer level (if you have you ever been in a Costco or Walmart that blue pallet is a CHEP pallet) and what happens is once the pallet becomes empty of the finished goods, CHEP then collects the pallets in partnership with its retailers and we bring it back to CHEP service centers, inspect them, and then re-issue them again, so we continue to keep those pallets and containers flowing through the supply chain to provide that regenerative process instead of just a one-way asset where at the end of life or at the end of the supply chain it could go to landfill. (3:26)

HOW CHEP ADDRESSES CHOKE POINTS IN THE CURRENT SUPPLY CHAIN: From a reliability perspective, we’ve had our challenges, but we’ve worked with our customers to make sure we have the right products in the right areas to support their demand. We are operating a pooling model, so we’re constantly moving our pallets to different regions. Before the pandemic, we had seasonality issues, and we still do a little bit, but we also have the expertise to get the assets where we need to at specific points in time. If you think about produce season and heavy usage of pallets in the Texas market (south of San Antonio and Houston) and the California Central Valley region, as well as in southern Florida the produce spike is in the summertime where you’re harvesting and into the fall where you’re harvesting, and customers need to get these products across the US. So we’ve developed programs with our customers to get those assets to those areas to supply demand for our customers. We saw the pandemic coming and we’ve seen challenges on the retail side where they’re building inventory sitting on pallets longer and we’ve worked with them to keep those pallets moving in the supply chain. We’ve also brought inventory in so that we had enough inventory to supply the needs for manufacturing of these pallets in our supply chain. I would be lying if I said there weren’t challenges, but we’ve done our best communicating and being transparent with our customers and carriers and being up front with them to help better flow the product through the supply chain. (5:17)

WHAT PROMPTED CHEP TO LAUNCH ITS ZERO WASTE INITIATIVE: The program was launched about two years ago and CHEP has always been doing sustainability and zero waste, but the inflection point for us was what’s next and how are we going to take it to the next level? Two years ago when we launched this program we saw a need from our customers that waste was a problem in the supply chain and they wanted to do better or felt they weren’t doing enough, so we partnered with them to find different types of solutions in the supply chain. We sent a survey out to our customers and the top three things we constantly heard was packaging waste, transport waste, and overall process waste within the supply chain. This program focuses on those three pillars because that’s what the customers have told us is important to them in eliminating waste in their supply chain. As we all know, COVID brought light onto sustainability. There’s more focus on it. I read an article the other day where consumers are willing to pay a little bit more for a sustainable product. You know they’re willing to help the environment and do better. It’s all coming to light as people are starting to question what are you doing here from the consumer level, what are you doing to help the environment, what are you doing to do better and we had a head start two years ago, but COVID has really helped accelerate this program. (8:00)

HOW CHEP IS REDUCING PACKAGING WASTE: We’re teaming up with customers so when they look at reducing their packaging, how is it going to be impacted in the supply chain. When they reduce the plastic packaging or paper packaging that was more robust in the past, and they want to put less plastic in their products, what is that going to do to the product if a driver has to slam on his brakes and the unit load actually shifts in the trailer? It may create product damage so you have stretch wrap around it or you use dunnage (inflatable bags) to keep the product from shifting in the container. So we may be taking packaging out of the product itself but you’re adding additional packaging whether it be through the stretch wrapper, the dunnage, etc. We actually team up with our customers via our innovation center in Orlando where we can test the different types of packaging in the supply chain and see how it reacts in racking, how does it react to different climates, how does it react to vibration, etc., so before you make the packaging change and start shipping, you can see how it will function. The last thing we want is for these great packaging changes to happen and then it gets to the retailer and the load shifted, and there’s more product damaged and then now you have to take it back so you’re adding more transport, more packaging to redo everything, etc. so we look at that with our customers (11:28)

HOW CHEP IS REDUCING TRANSPORT WASTE: From a transport perspective with partners like Convoy, we actually look at where do we have dedicated lanes, where do we have short hauls, long halls, where are there empty lanes both within our supply chain and our customer supply chain where we can team up to fill those empty lanes and eradicate those empty miles. Where are those moves that don’t make sense that we can partner with — and not just with trucks — we are looking at how can we move our pallets into those high demand areas whether it be on barges, intermodal, how do we look at alternative transport that’s going unused or underutilized to capitalize on that? So we’ll team up with our customers and our carriers as well where we have these brainstorming session where we bring in the carrier, we bring in CHEP, and we bring in the customer and all three of us sit down to look to see what are the pain points with those empty miles and let’s do a network overlay and let’s see how we can fix that. (13:00)

HOW CHEP IS REDUCING PROCESS WASTE: From a process perspective, it is no surprise to anyone that labor is at a premium these days, so from a process perspective, it kind of all comes together with transporting packaging waste into the process piece. Customers are changing their packaging, so if there’s that product damaged at the retailer and then they have to resend it to a co-packer to have it reworked, what can we do there to eliminate that extra step in the supply chain from the process perspective so we’re not adding that additional labor. (13:50) 

HOW CONVOY AND CHEP PARTNER: Convoy does a good job of leveraging their technology and they are transparent too as a partner and they have some tools like their automated reload process which has been very valuable — especially with COVID — that’s been great from a transparency perspective. Their automated reload process has saved time in the supply chain and has eliminated that waste so we are partnering with them and looking at those empty lanes that I mentioned. Convoy may be running into a customer location, but then that customer is shipping product out and Convoy doesn’t necessarily have the visibility that CHEP does, so in those ideation sessions we bring that data together leveraging Convoy’s technology, CHEP’s technology, and then the customer’s authorization to look at those links. We see if Convoy is going in with a product and then turning around leaving empty. How do we team them up with our customers to haul our goods out and then the customer can use their own fleet or another carrier to move other goods, but then we get that golden triangle. That’s been something that we’ve developed with our carrier partners like Convoy in the supply chain, but it comes back to what they bring from a technology perspective. They’ve also worked with us with some of their products and tools where we’ve actually gotten driver feedback. You’ve mentioned some of the bottlenecks where we didn’t have visibility. We had the driver feedback at the location level where there were long wait times and it helped us raise awareness to a blindspot where we didn’t realize there were long driver wait times at certain service centers, so we were able to quickly identify that with Convoy’s partnership and the driver feedback through their process to go address that immediately and figure out what is the root cause, what is the problem, and how do we fix that to get these drivers moving quickly so that they want to go to a CHEP service center. It helped alleviate a lot of those blind spots so it has proven to be a great partnership with Convoy. (13:50) 

HOW CHEP COMMUNICATES ITS PROGRESS ON SUSTAINABILITY AND ZERO WASTE: My vision for this program is to be a conduit in the supply chain. We do a couple of things. We have a life cycle analysis that was created by an independent third party in conjunction with CHEP that looks at the CHEP pallet itself so it’s a life cycle analysis or when our customers use the CHEP pallet what is the benefit that brings? We have a whole solutions team that will go in and do these ideation sessions — someone for transport, someone from supply chain, for packaging on our side, as well as myself, but I come in and tie it all together with those benefits where we measure if it’s a transport piece where Convoy goes in, I mentioned filling those empty lanes so what does that equate to in carbon emission reductions? We actually have a calculator that looks at those carbon emission reductions. Now some of our customers like to use our life cycle analysis, many customers have their own, so we’re willing to work with them to dig into the data behind what ours looks like, what yours looks like, etc. LCAs are becoming very popular these days within the sustainability realm so everyone has one but it’s a preference with how do you use it, what do you want to use it for, so it’s also being transparent and we can get down to the granular level and look at what we are saving on emissions, what are we saving on labor waste, and then how do we get that out there? I want to get the word out that CHEP has pioneered this for a long time, but more and more customers are coming to us for a solution. They ask who can you get me in contact with to solve these issues, how can we partner with Convoy, are other characters out there? What I’ve seen that’s been a little bit unique since COVID is that from a competitor perspective, previously people didn’t want to share ideas with someone else because there’s so much competition, but when COVID hit and everyone was struggling to get goods to a customer, I saw competitors working with each other to deliver goods to the consumer. We can’t do this alone, you have to do it together, and that’s my huge message that I cannot talk about enough. What we need to do is leverage our powers within the supply chain to drive this change and get the word out and quantify it.

ADVICE ON WHERE AND HOW TO START ON A SUSTAINABILITY JOURNEY: There are plenty of networks out there, there’s a lot of data out there, and it can be overwhelming at times. Talk to people you know in your industry, talk to similar customers. CHEP is here to offer up consulting services as well. I work with some of our customers and we have a whole team that will work with our customers who are starting their journey and connect them with some of the folks out there. You can use your own life cycle analysis. I’ve seen it as simple as a spreadsheet that someone’s created because it is the first step of their journey, so they haven’t invested in some of these larger LCAs, but they’re trying to build it out. Lean on CHEP, lean on Convoy who has a team as well that focuses on sustainability. They’ve gone down this path before. I think that’s the one great thing coming from the commercial side of the business over to sustainability, it’s a partnership and everybody wants to help each other out because they want what’s best for the earth. I haven’t seen that in any other role before. Is it COVID? I don’t know, but it’s a change that I’ve seen coming in this role that everybody wants to partner to find out so there are plenty of resources out there. Take it one step at a time. You may stumble, you may get it wrong, but you know we’re here together. I have seen where people presented data and other people have pointed at that data and said, “well I would calculate it this way or I would look at it a different way have you tried this?” and they throw the ideas out there, so don’t be afraid to share your information with others and don’t be afraid to make those mistakes because you’re not going to get where you need to get without making those mistakes, but look at other people too for best practices. (22:40) 

The post How CHEP is Helping to Create a “Zero Waste World” appeared first on Convoy.

The value of reaching net-zero is manyfold. Companies that are able to develop sustainable business practices will have a competitive advantage over their counterparts as customers demand green alternatives. 

General Insulation, an insulation distributor that stocks and fabricates a wide variety of industrial, commercial and fire-stopping products for the construction market, shares this forward-thinking approach to sustainability. Ian Allison, General Insulation’s Transportation and Supply Chain Manager talked with Ashley (General Insulation’s Account Manager) and I about the value his company sees in reaching net-zero emissions sooner rather than later. 

Alex: Hey Ian, thank you for joining us! We have some questions prepared and are looking forward to learning about how General Insulation is thinking about sustainability and the initiatives your team is engaged with. 

To kick things off can you tell us about the responsibilities of your current role?

Ian: Sure thing. At General Insulation I am responsible for implementing new processes and developing or, in some cases, purchasing technology to create a more efficient transportation network. Ultimately, this provides cost avoidance throughout our supply chain and leads to a more reliable network for our manufacturers and distributors across the country. 

Alex: Awesome. Ian, throughout our conversations I have been impressed with your knowledge of General Insulation’s operations and the transportation space at large. Can you tell us about your career in supply chain and what you have seen as the biggest evolution in this sector over the years?

Ian: My career in supply chain began 15 years ago at North America’s largest 3pl – C.H. Robinson. While working as a Sales Executive for CHR, I had the opportunity to study, and help improve, a wide variety of supply chains. This experience gave me insight into how best practices from differing supply chains can be shared within an organization. This process increases overall productivity and leads to a culture of innovation within an organization. 

To answer the second part of your question, the largest transformation I’ve seen over the years is the widespread adoption of web-based technologies, starting with simple software products and evolving more recently into the interconnected IOT space of today. It’s pretty wild to think that not long ago shippers and carriers were exchanging documents via fax.

Alex: Speaking of innovation within organizations, I know you have a reputation for being an innovator. Can you tell us why you think innovation is important?

Ian: Well, I think it’s fairly well understood that if organizations don’t embrace change, the risk of disruption increases over time. Organizations and teams within them need to have the forethought to explore future outcomes. It is important to understand the tradeoffs associated with new technologies and digital strategies. In my experience with supply chains, this pursuit often is the gateway to cost and process improvements.

Alex: How has Convoy helped you to improve your supply chain and what cost or process improvements has General Insulation realized through our partnership?

Ian: GIC had a few carrier partners, but we were missing a way to easily measure the competitiveness of their rates. At our branches, employees had to email or call carriers for rates. It was an inefficient use of their time, and unreliable as well.  By partnering with Convoy we were able to easily introduce competition within our truckload supply chain. We could compare rates and get a high-level view. At the end of the day, we’re seeing cost-avoidance and process efficiencies—from digital rate requests, to rapid load tendering and BOL creation.

Alex: Ashley, is there anything you have worked with Ian and his team on that would be worth adding here?

Ashley: With the market volatility we’re seeing heading into this holiday season, shippers are having to rely on the spot market more than ever before. It can be challenging to get a truck and far too easy to overpay. General Insulation is a great example of a shipper that jumped in with all hands on deck (they have 20+ active users!), which is a true testament to how easy Convoy’s online platform is to use and implement for larger teams. 

Alex: Thanks for all the background information! Keeping in mind everything we’ve just learned, Ian, I’m curious to hear in your words how sustainability fits into General Insulation’s business model?

Ian: Well, being ethical is core to our mission at GIC—we’re ethical in every aspect of our business operations. Part of that means we embrace our role as stewards of the environment. When it comes to emerging trends and thinking long-term about our company strategy, running a net-zero supply chain makes a difference. Some of our customers have sustainability goals, and our adoption of sustainable practices has set us apart from competitors. More and more I think this is going to be a differentiator. 

Alex: Ian, in closing I’m curious to hear your perspective on what trend(s) you think all supply chain leaders should pay attention to this year? 

Ian: Blockchain has the ability to transform the transportation and supply chain industry through secure communication and transparency between partners—up and downstream. Gaps in data disappear and decisions concerning purchasing, logistics and customer management can be made holistically. Widespread adoption of blockchain in the supply chain space is probably years away, but organizations should begin to understand the steps needed to evolve to embrace that solution.

Alex: That wraps up all of our questions for today! Ian, I want to say a sincere thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. 

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