“Since 2009, our brokerage division has grown aggressively, and now accounts for nearly 15% of U.S. Xpress Inc.’s entire book of business,” says Ryan Rogers, chief operating officer at U.S. Xpress Logistics. “Due to this rapid growth, we needed to quickly find a solution capable of delivering visibility regardless of our carrier partners. With MacroPoint’s automated location updates, we have gained an advantage that sets us apart from other logistics and brokerage companies.
“What really impressed us was MacroPoint’s ease of use,” Rogers adds. “It works on all cell phones, including both standard flip phones and smart phones, and it integrates directly with our TMS. This level of automated visibility gives us the peace of mind that comes from always knowing the status of a load, without ever needing to make a single driver check call.”
The Shaker Group, a full service transportation company that offers brokerage and a range of freight services, found expedited and time sensitive shipments accounting for more than 40% of its business. Furthermore, while the full service transportation provider was able to receive and deliver status updates for asset-based shipments, its brokered freight was a different story.
“Before MacroPoint, our brokered freight tracking process only included two check calls per day and shipments could go six to eight hours between location updates, and as an expedited carrier that is not often enough,” says Jason Smith, vice president of operations at The Shaker Group. “Now, we don’t have to require drivers to make check calls and we receive dozens of updates on each shipment to gain insight into the location of brokered freight.
“We’ve also integrated MacroPoint with our Prophesy Dispatch TMS,” Smith continues. “The integration provides automated position data for brokered loads as well as automated workflow directly within Prophesy Dispatch. We have an automotive account with a very competitive RFP process. Since we started using MacroPoint to track our brokered freight within Prophesy Dispatch, I’m pretty sure we have been winning all their business.”
“The real challenge to driving up efficiency in the supply chain is the need to gain visibility into load status,” Spangenberg says. “In the absence of information, assumptions are made that might be 50% correct and incomplete data breeds low confidence. A significant degree of error is not very effective for load planning and if you can’t deliver, you can’t take part in what is a growing, trillion dollar economic engine.”
MacroPoint’s automated load tracking software is a ‘pay per use’ solution that provides real-time location tracking, on-time delivery monitoring, and arrival and departure notifications to third parties. To date, nearly 300,000 drivers supporting thousands of brokers, shippers and trucking companies are MacroPoint enabled. For help in improving the visibility and accuracy of your shipments, click here to visit the MacroPoint website.
