be notified if the truck is ahead of sched-
ule or behind,” said Bill Ashburn, chief
marketing officer at HighJump Software
Inc. “You would know he’s arrived,
because he broke the geofence and he’s
no longer moving. So now you know he’s
at the DC.”
That location-enabled TMS extension
could also allow a company to automat-
ically track information relating to fuel
taxes, driving logs, and hours of ser-
vice, sparing drivers the task of keeping
detailed records and reporting them to
the dispatcher once a day.
The transition from daily updates to
real-time connectivity will produce big
results, but it may take time to reach all
levels of the shipping industry.
“Transportation is a very generational
business,” Ashburn said. “The millenni-
als come in and they’re more savvy with
technology. The generation (before)
them is wowed by real-time data.”
Mobile TMS apps can do far more
than generate truck schedules, Ashburn
said. A driver with a TMS app on his
smartphone could take photos of dam-
aged cargo, record vehicle inspections
at checkpoints, or scan images of doc-
uments such as bills of lading. In some
cases, a mobile-enabled TMS could even
generate additional profit for users.
“Now, you can see if there’s a vehicle
here and a load available over there. Let’s
connect the dots and reduce deadhead
miles,” Ashburn said. “If you don’t have
it, you’re at an extreme competitive disadvantage.”
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Shippers and their customers are raising
their expectations for real-time TMS
performance as they become aware of
these abilities, said Chris Parker, chief
operating officer of InMotion Global
Inc., a TMS provider in Brandon, Fla.
“Today’s logistics professionals are
much more sophisticated than they
were 10 years ago,” Parker said in a
press release. “They are used to one-stop
online services, with access from any
location and on any device.”
TMS use has more than tripled since
2005, according to a July 2015 survey
conducted for the company. The same
survey showed 54 percent of logistics
professionals use some sort of TMS soft-
ware today, compared with just 15 per-
cent 10 years ago.
Logistics companies are flocking to
transportation management systems to
address the issues that keep fleets from
operating at maximum efficiency, partic-
ularly those related to drivers’ schedules
and delays that all-too-commonly occur
at the junction between the warehouse
and the truck.
Those pain points are among the top
causes of wasted driving hours and lost
freight-carrying capacity, according to
a recent white paper from J.B. Hunt
Transport Inc., a multimodal trans-
portation logistics company based in
Lowell, Ark.
Delays in transportation can cost
freight carriers dearly because of the
Department of Transportation’s strict
limits on truck drivers’ hours of service,
the report says.
Current regulations limit commercial
motor vehicle drivers to an “on duty”
day of 840 consecutive minutes (or 14
hours), which quickly shrinks to 660
minutes (or 11 hours) after subtract-
ing mandated safety inspections and a
required 30-minute break within the first
eight hours.
Because the hours-of-service count-
down logs all minutes consecutively,
drivers can’t simply stop the clock during
traffic jams or warehouse delays. J.B.
Hunt goes on to list a range of additional
time-wasters, such as waiting around for
freight to be loaded or unloaded, deten-
tion and dwell time caused by inflexible
pickup and delivery times, and unsched-
uled variation in shipment schedules.
The common thread to most of these
time-wasters is that they occur at the
point where the truck meets the distri-
bution center. That means a TMS app
with access to warehouse data could
help users avoid logjams by identifying
time-consuming activities and devising a
more efficient route.
By smoothing out those bumps in the
road, a connected TMS application could
add valuable minutes to every driver’s
day and boost the number of shipments
passing through each warehouse.
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