Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) is launching a digital platform for contracted freight carriers in the US to match them with the company’s spot loads.
“To manufacture trucks, we need carriers to deliver components and parts to our plants,” said Lori Heino-Royer, director of business innovation at Daimler Trucks North America. “Offering a customised app to our contracted carriers gives them first access to our spot business and improves critical points in our supply chain.”
DTNA will use a variation of an app which utilises data and machine-learning technology and was developed by Loadsmart, a technology company specialising in full truckload shipping. The companies created a customised version, available through mobile devices, which was piloted with a small group of DTNA’s carriers in Q4.
“It demonstrated dramatic improvements in the time to process a spot shipment – going from five hours to just 18 minutes on average. In addition, carriers received payments in two days instead of 30 days,” said the Portland, Oregon-based truckmaker.
Loadsmart’s CEO, Ricardo Salgado, added that DTNA’s participating fleet customers on average increased their spot loads by more than 50% and reduced acceptance, processing and delivery time on such shipments by more than 90%.