Convoy, J.B. Hunt Transport and Uber Freight recently announced the formation of the Scheduling Standards Consortium (SSC) which aims to solve transportation scheduling challenges by establishing the freight industry’s first formal set of appointment scheduling application programming interface (API) standards. Complex, pervasive, industry-wide challenges such as this require collaborative, industry-wide solutions; the makeup of the SSC’s founding members underscores the need to standardize how information is exchanged around scheduling shipments.
Today, scheduling system and interface fragmentation is a point of friction amongst carriers, brokers, and shippers. As the industry turns increasingly to an integrated network of providers and solutions to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of each shipment, it has become increasingly important to define and share a consistent data architecture and API standard for the distribution of scheduling information.
The SSC’s objectives are to define an API standard for sharing scheduling information, implement those standardized interfaces to enable integrations in existing systems, and advocate for the standard across the industry. The standard will bring more cohesion and resiliency to the movement of goods, making it easier to book and manage appointments, optimize processes for drivers, shippers and receivers, and drive operational efficiencies for the industry at large.
Adoption is critical for the effort to succeed. The SSC aims to sign on other brokers or third-party logistics service providers, transportation management system and warehouse management system vendors, and others to help shape the future of supply chain efficiency. Initial SSC standards and documentation, starting with full truckload freight, will be available as early as Q1 2023.
