Check-in calls have long been a pain point for carriers and brokers alike. One logistics provider, LTI Delivers, has managed to reduce those calls by 40% while simultaneously increasing tracking compliance and improving customer service.
Despite its $16 million in annual revenue, LTI maintains a small staff. The company aims to embrace new technological trends as a way to weed out more monotonous work and free up its staff for more complex, higher-value tasks where human judgment and interaction is needed. Along these lines, in 2018, the company set out to automate its driver check-in process.
“I felt that as a small brokerage, if we could get out in front of tracking issues and improve our visibility significantly, that it could be a real service differentiator for us,” Mark Boss, general manager for LTI Delivers, said. “Our customers had been asking for more and more visibility, and we viewed increasing our load tracking capabilities as a way to both meet the needs of current customers and grow our business.”
With LTI’s customers starting to expect greater transparency, the company decided to integrate Trucker Tools’ visibility solution with the McLeod PowerBroker interface in June 2018. This gave the company automatic, continuous access to a shipment’s location. Each shipment’s location is updated every five minutes, enabling LTI to provide its customers with real-time updates.
Introducing Trucker Tools’ visibility solution has helped the company reduce check-in calls by 40%, according to a recent case study. The company also achieved an 86% visibility compliance success rate in 2019, which Boss believes will climb even higher as staff members are trained on the visibility tools. And on the truckers’ side, it improved LTI’s relationships with carriers by reducing manual calls, texts and emails drivers were fielding every day.
After integrating the visibility solution, LTI decided to introduce Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity, a carrier relationship and capacity management platform. It is integrated with the multi-functional Trucker Tools Mobile Driver app, providing connected access to a deep network of small carriers and owner-operators. The smartphone-based mobile app has been downloaded by over 800,000 drivers and is actively used by 130,000 small fleets.
“Adding Smart Capacity to our operation is like adding another arrow in our quiver, in terms of the level of service we can offer,” Boss said.
The Smart Capacity platform provides real-time, precise intelligence on available capacity, and predictive matching of trucks to loads. Its Book-it-Now automated load booking feature allows LTI to automate its processes even further. The company uses it to provide added value to both current and potential customers.
These features, coupled with the company’s strides in shipment tracking, have allowed LTI to significantly improve the level of service it offers its shipping customers.
“Trucker Tools will continue to keep us out on the front lines of technology and help us increase the services we can offer our customers,” Boss said. “When I took this job, I took on the responsibility of growing this company very seriously. Having Trucker Tools as a tool in our belt can only help us do just that.”