Image: GateHouse Logistics
GateHouse's ghTrack service aggregates telematics, ELD, and GPS data from across the supply chain.
GateHouse's ghTrack service aggregates telematics, ELD, and GPS data from across the supply chain.
GateHouse's ghTrack service aggregates telematics, ELD, and GPS data from across the supply chain.
GateHouse's ghTrack service aggregates telematics, ELD, and GPS data from across the supply chain.
GateHouse's ghTrack service aggregates telematics, ELD, and GPS data from across the supply chain.

Using ELD data to fill empty miles

July 17, 2018
GateHouse, Cargo Chief to use truck data to inform 3PL services

Electronic logging devices (ELDs) contain lots of useful information about drivers and loads—so it was only a matter of time until that info started getting parsed out and used in new ways, like increasing utilization.

Supply chain data aggregation company GateHouse Logistics and Cargo Chief, a third-party logistics (3PL) technology provider, are looking to do exactly that.

GateHouse's ghTrack service tracks data from carriers across all modes of transportation, and that data will help inform Cargo Chief's 3PL freight- and carrier-matching solutions to identify where there are empty trucks ready to drive a load and alert brokers and carriers of trucks' availability.

"Every year, American trucks travel at less than market rates or even empty for nearly half of their billion miles on our highways," contended Russell Jones, CEO of Cargo Chief. Integrating ghTrack data and Cargo Chief solutions will "provide brokers and transport companies with information in real time about trucks in specific areas that are intelligently paired with available loads." 

Jones also pointed to ghTrack enabling tracking of truckload shipments. In response to an inquiry from Fleet Owner, he noted that carriers would need to opt in to receive these "intelligent" load offers from their large named broker customers but they may be likely to do so, given the potential business it could represent. 

"Not all will say yes, but we think it makes financial sense," Jones said. "We think many or most will [opt in], especially when the market balances out."

About the Author

Aaron Marsh

Before computerization had fully taken hold and automotive work took someone who speaks engine, Aaron grew up in Upstate New York taking cars apart and fixing and rewiring them, keeping more than a few great jalopies (classics) on the road that probably didn't deserve to be. He spent a decade inside the Beltway covering Congress and the intricacies of the health care system before a stint in local New England news, picking up awards for both pen and camera.

He's written about you-name-it, from transportation and law and the courts to events of all kinds and telecommunications, and landed in trucking when he joined Fleet Owner in July 2015. Long an editorial leader, he's a keeper of knowledge at Fleet Owner ready to dive in on the technical and the topical inside and all around trucking—and still turns a wrench or two. Or three. 

And he's never without a camera, or so rumor has it.

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