Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) is rolling out a new digital freight matching platform in U.S. for its contracted motor carriers hauling cargo to and from its manufacturing plants.
Lori Heino-Royer, DTNA’s director of business innovation, said the new platform is based on a “customized version” of an application developed by Loadsmart.
“To manufacture trucks, we need carriers to deliver components and parts to our plants,” she noted in a statement. “Offering a customized app to our contracted carriers gives them first access to our spot business and improves critical points in our supply chain.”
The Loadsmart platform, available online and through mobile devices, helps update the logistics process for “spot loads,” which are freight shipments that are outside of regularly scheduled shipments.
DTNA said it teamed up with Loadsmart to develop a customized version of its platform, which was piloted with a small subset of the OEM’s contract carriers in the fall last year.
DTNA added that the pilot test revealed “dramatic improvements” in the time required to process a spot shipment – dropping from five hours to just 18 minutes on average. In addition, the OEM’s contract carriers received payments in two days instead of 30 days, the manufacturer added.
“We saw DTNA’s participating fleets increase their average number of spot loads moved by more than 50% and improve their average time to accept, process, and deliver a spot shipment by over 90%,” noted Loadsmart CEO Ricardo Salgado.
