While the use of artificial intelligence in transportation management is growing, some fleets are more readily adopting management systems that employ the latest technologies.
“We have a solid appetite for automation and increased use of AI,” Patrick Cozzens, president of Modern Transportation, said. “The possibilities for adding functionality that save time and lower costs have driven our interest in understanding where these new applications will have great value.”
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Modern Transportation specializes in trucking and logistics services for chemical, liquid and dry bulk, industrial, manufacturing, construction, and consumer goods supply chains. The carrier’s more than 350 drivers operate from 22 terminals in 13 states.
Dan Benacquista, VP of strategic operations and planning at Modern Transportation, noted several challenges that drove the search for a new type of TMS driven by AI. Included were physical trip sheets and scale tickets that were causing lost revenue from under-invoicing payloads.
“We also had high costs and administrative time from extensive manual verification processes around accessorial pay, and equipment compatibility and dispatch assignments, including two to three hours of time weekly to calculate driver pay and customer bills,” Benacquista said. “In addition, growth demanded an automated solution for accurately applying fuel surcharges.”
In September 2024, Modern Transportation implemented the BeyondTrucks multi-tenant transportation management system at 20 terminals. The cloud-based solution, which was integrated with the carrier’s EBE Technologies enterprise process management and Vector yard management software, replaced an existing on-premise TMS.
BeyondTrucks also enabled integrations with Samsara onboard technology, Microsoft Power BI software, Great Plains accounting systems, TMT maintenance software, UKG workforce management software, and EDI systems that were in place at Modern Transportation. The TMS allowed the company to upgrade its technology, including migrating its ERP/accounting system to Acumatica, its ELD to Platform Science, and the fleet’s payroll system to Paylocity.
“By combining system integrations, proprietary modules, and adaptable configurations that unify data and workflows, the BeyondTrucks TMS reduces our administrative time for load building, payroll, dispatch, and billing processes,” Benacquista reported. “At a lower cost for hosting and updates, it is automating and optimizing our operations management.”
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BeyondTrucks TMS provided Modern Transportation with the following additional functionality, according to Benacquista:
- Automated compatibility checks for driver and equipment assignments
- Driver workflow orchestration
- Hierarchical rating engine capability
- Activity-based payroll
- Data warehousing for Microsoft Power BI applications
- Workflow management tools for field data validation, rejections, and corrections
Modern Transportation is also using the new BeyondTrucks integration with Breakthrough Fuel Recovery to automate the application of fuel surcharges.
“Traditional fuel surcharge calculations that rely on national or regional average fuel prices often resulted in discrepancies between our actual fuel costs and benchmark rates, leading to inefficient load acceptance decisions and potential over and underpayment by shippers,” Benacquista explained. “With the integration, we can provide more precise and automated market-based fuel surcharge calculations based on exact prices, timing, taxes, and geography of freight movements.”
“With one of our largest customers using Breakthrough Fuel Recovery as well, manually incorporating fuel surcharges for their shipments was simply not sustainable,” Benacquista continued. “Now, after applying fuel surcharges individually for about 50 shipments per month, we’re using the new integration on hundreds of transactions each day.”
Overall, Patrick Cozzens noted that Modern Transportation has achieved savings of approximately $5 million annually through the implementation of a new TMS and employing more effective business processes. The direct and indirect savings come from reduced revenue losses by eliminating payload invoice errors and under-utilization of assets, lower costs for cloud-based hosting, updates and bolt-on solutions, as well as reductions in administrative time for load building, verification of accessorial pay and dispatch assignments, and driver pay and customer billing.
“The solutions and processes we’ve continued to implement have been sophisticated and cutting-edge,” Cozzens said. “That goes hand in hand with our long-standing approach to adopting and creating innovative and modern service solutions, which was the motivation behind the naming of our company.
“Since 1987, we’ve worked to consistently develop superior alternatives for hauling bulk materials from their sources to production sites,” Cozzens added. “Today, we continue to serve providers, producers, and manufacturers, and we’re most proud that they see Modern Transportation as a carrier of choice for implementing supply chain solutions that work successfully in mission-critical production environments.”
