With over two decades of experience in developing and deploying enterprise transportation management software (TMS), Magnus Technologies has a solid foundation, particularly in auto-hauling.

“Truckload carriers are accustomed to using TMS platforms with manual processes, static views and data grids for load planning and other functions,” said Jay Delaney, director of product management at Magnus Technologies. “We broke the mold, redefining the user experience with data visualizations and AI-driven enhancements that deliver breakthrough fleet management capabilities.”

The Magnus Platform offers users advanced visibility into freight and capacity within their planning regions, projecting up to five days ahead, providing valuable foresight for planning.

“The platform’s comprehensive metrics, customizable views, and accurate forecasting tools enable users to strategically reposition resources to balance freight networks, transforming empty miles and dwell time into revenue,” the news release stated. “The Magnus Platform also enriches load planning with dynamic map visualizations, including real-time weather, traffic, and color-coding to identify exceptions.”

Among its recent innovations is the Magnus EDI Manager, empowering users to establish rules for automatic acceptance of customer load tenders via EDI and other data exchange methods.

“Additionally, it helps companies make better-informed decisions regarding accepting or declining orders by providing industry-first visibility of network balance, lane guidance, and customer volume commitments,” the news release stated.

Plus, Magnus Customer Tracking Portal enhances transparency and end-to-end shipment visibility for fleets. This portal includes accurate shipment ETA predictions based on a comprehensive range of variables.

Additionally, Magnus has incorporated new features into its TMS platform, such as truckload rate calculations, accessory charges, hourly driver pay, and yard check capabilities supporting dropped trailers, complete with cargo and location status visibility, giving carriers a high level of insight and control into truckload operations.

Source: The Trucker

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Traditionally, a driver arriving at a warehouse navigates through paperwork, hands it to a guard, who then verifies the details, confirms timeliness, and communicates with the warehouse to determine the designated location. This multistep process, fraught with potential delays, now faces disruption through the deployment of AI-powered check-in systems by RXO at warehouses and distribution centers.

RXO’s visual AI technology, initially implemented at its cross-border facility, utilizes video recognition to identify trucks, extract image and video data, and streamline the check-in and security procedures. Integrated with RXO’s Yard Management System, the system automates the matching of appointments, eliminating the need for manual handling of trailer numbers and appointment coordination.

“It solved two types of problems,” said Yoav Amiel, RXO chief information officer. “One is for the carriers overall, there are bottlenecks at the gate, so the inefficiencies, that when they are at the gate and they need to wait for too long. The second thing is around internal productivity and error elimination.”

Previously, manual processes led to truck congestion at the gate during check-in due to traffic volume, documentation efforts, and typing errors. The visual AI technology leverages machine learning, computer vision, and text recognition to swiftly process trailer numbers from video feeds, notifying facility staff upon the truck’s arrival and providing comprehensive information.

“The system automatically knows how to identify the different components or numbers or identification of the truck,” Amiel said, “matching that automatically to the appointment, and feeding to the yard management system that this truck is now coming in. That saves a lot of time and creates a lot of efficiencies.”

At RXO’s Laredo, Texas facility, the AI-driven system has yielded positive outcomes, notably reducing gate wait times by approximately 30% and enhancing data accuracy. Importantly, the system only extracts publicly available information visible on the truck, mitigating privacy concerns for drivers.

“You’re trying to type the name or the information of the truck (manually) and you need to type it now with a keyboard into the system, sometimes you make mistakes,” Amiel said. “One of the areas where we invested a lot of energy is making sure that when you take a video, you could have a lot of information as part of the video. It’s not just a truck, and we need to make sure that our extraction engine is smart enough to identify the truck itself, to eliminate any noise or any other information that is coming through the feed, and is identifying only the things that we need – and be able to extract that, match it, feed it to the yard management system, and streamline the process overall.”

The entire investment is borne by the facility, with no need for additional hardware or software on the truck or trailer beyond clearly visible identification markers.

“It’s not that we now need every truck to have a specific IoT device or anything on it,” Amiel said. “Now, keep in mind, sometimes these numbers could be blurry, or some characters are missing. But this is where technology comes to play. When you have enough information and you have the scheduling appointment out there, you could match with some level of certainty and decide, ‘Okay. This is the truck I’m looking for, or this is not the one.'”

Looking forward, RXO plans to expand this AI-based system to other high-traffic facilities and intends to offer it as a standalone service to companies operating in similar environments. As the system continues to evolve and refine its algorithms, future iterations aim to enhance its network-wide capabilities.

“Our next level is to be able to even do yard cycle counting and warehouse cycle counting,” he said. “Think about leveraging drones in real time; self-operated drones. It’s like your automated vacuum cleaner; these things that wake up every hour or every whatever cycle of time and scan the information and the drone can feed that video into the system, making sure that everybody’s in the yard and the occupation of the slots on the yard is really according to the plan. And if there are any deviation, you could take action instead of creating sometimes chaos if somebody parked in the wrong place or went into the wrong door.”

Source: Commercial Carrier Journal

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Initially, Project G experimented with a chat interface linked to Geotab Data Connector. Customers could inquire about their fleet data using natural language, similar to the functionality of Chat GPT. However, the beta version faced challenges, such as lacking memory and having limited data access. Geotab addressed these issues in collaboration with fleet customers, resulting in the development of Geotab Ace.

“The two problems that I just spoke of, we solved those,” said Mike Branch, Geotab vice president of data and analytics. “One is that no longer is it only Geotab’s Data Connector data; now you have access to zones, rules, groups, almost everything in MyGeotab, which is really transformational if you think about it. And it’s no longer a goldfish; it has memory, so that same conversation that you’re used to having with Chat GPT, you can have that with Geotab Ace as well.”

Scheduled for an early access release in the second quarter of this year, Geotab Ace processes billions of data points daily. It transforms this data into intelligent insights using conversational AI within the Geotab platform. This empowers fleets to interact more seamlessly with their data and make informed, data-driven decisions. Geotab Ace provides access to a wide array of data, including predictive safety analytics, predictive maintenance, trip data, zone activity, electric vehicle statistics, exception events, GPS tracking, and more.

One notable improvement is that Ace now retains memory of past interactions, enhancing its ability to provide customized answers tailored to specific business needs. The platform also ensures immediate and insightful responses, making it a valuable tool for fleet operations’ success, as Branch emphasized.

“Since kind of time immemorial, I think one of the things that customers are really interested in doing is driving down time to insight,” he said. “We’ve got 50,000 customers across so many different segments. There’s no one-size-fits-all dashboard for everything. So, our hypothesis is that generative AI can really help reduce that time to insight.”

Source: Commercial Carrier Journal

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According to industry leaders, investing in technology during a slow economy is key to preparing for a stronger comeback. Companies can optimize their operations, improve efficiency, and drive growth regardless of market volatility.

BlueGrace Logistics Chief Technology Officer, Azad Ratzki, suggests three vital technologies that can empower carriers to not only survive a bearish economy but also thrive in a bullish one: large language models (LLMs), freight optimization platforms, and no-code automation.

“By using LLMs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT for communications, freight optimization strategies employing the use of pooling, and the automation of repetitive processes using the variety of no-code options available on the market, there has never been a better time to revisit and reevaluate the way organizations operate,” Ratzki said. “While some processes may be tried and true, a bearish market is vitally important to the growth of the economy, helping driving innovation and finding new, untapped opportunities in a more constrained environment. All three of these technologies have the power to radically transform the way businesses perform.”

Boost Efficiency and Enhance Human Tasks with LLMs

LLMs can help your business by automating certain tasks, allowing your team to focus on what really matters. With LLMs, you can streamline communication, harnessing the subtleties of human nature in every interaction.

With LLMs, you can streamline person-to-person interaction without losing the essence of human nature. From obtaining status updates from partners to answering frequently asked questions, LLMs can handle it all while maintaining a personal touch.

While chatbots have been around for a while, recent advancements in artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, have taken this technology to new heights. Now, more people than ever are realizing the potential of LLMs.

Don’t think this technology is just for big players. Even smaller carriers can benefit from off-the-shelf LLM products readily available on the market.

Simplify and Streamline Your Processes with Automation Platforms

According to Ratzki, carriers can streamline repetitive tasks by taking advantage of the wide range of user-friendly automation platforms now available. These platforms, such as Google Workflows and Microsoft Power Automate, empower carriers to seamlessly connect and automate various systems without the need for coding skills. By leveraging these platforms, carriers can effortlessly integrate data from emails and forms to create efficient automations, all without having to write a single line of code.

In addition, Ratzki drew parallels between this conversation and LLM, emphasizing the importance of simplifying and optimizing processes through automation.

“You’re looking at it from the perspective of here’s what I have to do, and I end up doing it many times over and over again every single day,” Ratzki said. “How do I streamline that? How do I automate that so that someone can be freed up to go do something that is more important or even more profitable? Any process that involves computers in your organization is now an ideal candidate for automation through these platforms.”

Unlock Exponential Growth with Optimization Platforms

Optimization platforms allow organizations to pool their freight, resulting in significant time and cost savings.

By seamlessly integrating with 3PL platforms, carriers can achieve remarkable efficiency. Automatic load feeding and real-time tracking are just some of the cost-effective measures that can elevate your operations to new heights.

“You want to reduce as much friction as possible, and what I mean by friction, if you’re looking at it from a carrier perspective, you want those volumes to come to you, especially in this sort of economy. You want all barriers for potential customers of your services to be removed,” Ratzki said.

Ratzki claims that this technology is both easy to use and cost-effective for smaller carriers. He highlights that it can serve as a protective measure against economic downturns by eliminating the need for actively seeking out new business opportunities.

“Whether you realize it or not, if you’re that smaller carrier, when an integration is in place, business is transacting without your intervention in any way, shape or form,” he said. “It’s basically doing business without even having to really talk about it, so you’re just becoming part of a larger broader feeder network.”

According to Ratzki, smaller carriers don’t need to start with a huge investment to reap the rewards. Whether you’re a big player or a small fry, these three technologies are accessible and affordable for carriers of any size.

The majority of these technologies are offered as software subscriptions, making them cost-effective as your business grows. Ratzki suggests taking advantage of a free trial or signing up for a low-cost monthly subscription to test drive the benefits before fully committing.

“You don’t have to be a software engineer or technologist to really leverage these things. But once you start experimenting with them, you can quickly see the value,” he said. “I think if you’re small to medium, you’re still a very blank canvas from a technology perspective so there should be relatively no barriers.

“The smaller you are, the less capital you have to work with obviously, but in terms of non-capital-related barriers for small and medium business, you should be pretty free and clear to experiment with some of these things,” he added. “I think with the larger carriers, the conversation changes because typically you already have a large amount of technology infrastructure, so then it becomes a discovery of how do I weave this into my current technology stack; that becomes the barrier to entry.”

Source: CCJ Digital

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These game-changing new tech tools were designed specifically for shippers but what does this mean for small fleet owners and individual operators?

It would give carriers access to a “Yelp for shippers” feature that industry experts, including scientists testifying to Congress, have been asking for.

Insights AI, is an intelligent tool designed to empower decision makers at major shipping companies. This technology keeps a watchful eye on every aspect of a load’s journey, alerting shippers of any potential issues or delays.

“Hey, shipper, this one facility is 4.1 stars because you suck, you don’t have a bathroom and the gate takes 15 minutes instead of five minutes,” Lior Ron gave as a somewhat informal summary of what the AI tool might tell a shipper. “This is the kind of analysis and coordination” shippers can’t, or won’t, do on their own, he said.

Any trucker who’s had a bad experience or been detained by a shipper knows the value in being able to get the complaint straight to the top of the organization.

“Once they’re in the ecosystem, once we have GPS tracking on them with the TMS side, we have the ability to connect the TMS with the appointments set with the carrier to track when appointments are consumed, if there’s a late arrival or late pickup, and to expand an appointment window,” said Ron, who called it a “game changer. The pitch is for [carriers] to participate in our digital ecosystem and be able to engage to reduce detention time.”

He added that the system could help “reduce like half” of empty miles with carriers working the system as well.

Ron also expressed that the company’s hope was to help “beloved small and mid-sized fleets” with a number of challenges.

For example, the TMS, which through automation can now open up the bid processes at huge shippers to fleets of any size.

“A mega shipper with a big freight auction, they don’t have the time, effort, money or staff to deal with small fleets and medium-sized fleets'” bids, he said. Now, the automated tool should “democratize procurement” processes on the platform.

In addition, Uber Freight plans to step up their game in the fight against freight fraud, something that fellow brokers Convoy and Transifx are already tackling head-on.

“It’s been top of mind for everyone,” said Ron. “We spend a lot of time talking about fraud and double brokering with the shipper community. We’ve taken steps and made a big investment over the last nine months, since last year when some of the theft rings in SoCal started, to become the safest marketplace for carriers and shippers.”

Uber Freight is stepping up its efforts to combat fraud by revamping their carrier selection process. According to Ron, this includes a thorough examination and curation of their carrier base.

The company has implemented advanced tools that analyze fraud signals within the system. These tools help identify carriers that require closer attention and investigation.

In the past, industry experts like Dale Prax and Matthew Patrick have suggested simple methods to identify bad-actor carriers, such as verifying physical addresses and checking for multiple MC numbers. Uber Freight takes these recommendations seriously, but they also rely on sophisticated technology to enhance the process. Unlike other platforms, Uber Freight actively takes action on flagged accounts.

Although Ron didn’t provide specific numbers, he expressed that Uber Freight’s fraud rate is significantly lower than industry benchmarks, proving that their comprehensive measures have been effective in combating fraud.

Source: Overdrive

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Additionally, the study showed that 40% of these videos recorded vehicles exceeding the posted speed limit. This is concerning as speeding has been a significant factor in about one-third of all motor vehicle fatalities for the past 20 years. Furthermore, 64% of truck drivers killed in automobile accidents were not wearing seatbelts. These findings highlight the importance of wearing seatbelts for both personal safety and accident prevention.

“Generally, the driver’s actions that are captured most often are common occurrences like following the vehicle in front of you too closely and speeding. Drivers being unbelted is another action that we see quite often, especially as the detection systems surrounding unbelted drivers get more and more sophisticated,” said Kyle Warlick, a senior analyst in client intelligence at Lytx, a video telematics and fleet management solutions provider. “While driving unbelted has less of a direct relationship to collisions, as opposed to speeding and following too closely, we have seen that people who get into collisions often have been driving unbelted in the past. This is likely because drivers who are not engaging in safe driving by putting on their seatbelts are more likely to ignore other safety regulations.”

Verizon Connect has made improvements to its AI dashcam to enhance fleet management. The updated dashcam now includes new AI tags for detecting speeding and unfastened seat belts, providing additional context in each video. This allows fleet managers to analyze and prioritize harsh driving events more efficiently.

The Cloud AI video analytics engine from Verizon Connect offers further context, helping fleet managers identify and address immediate concerns without spending excessive time. Through Cloud AI analysis, fleet managers can easily view videos with severity labels and additional tags for tailgating, rolling stops, and phone distractions. By specifically identifying instances of speeding and unfastened seat belts, Verizon Connect empowers fleet managers to focus on coaching for better driving behaviors.

Gary Johnson, the head of safety and compliance strategy at Motive, a fleet management company, emphasizes the importance of regular updates and innovation in telematics systems. These updates help track and notify drivers and operators of unsafe driving behaviors, such as phone calls, texting, rolling stops, not using seat belts, and tailgating, which often lead to accidents and fatalities.

A recent study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute compared Motive’s AI dashcam with two AI dashcams from other providers in the market. The study revealed that Motive’s AI dashcam outperformed the others, highlighting that the accuracy of AI systems can vary based on factors like camera placement and lighting conditions throughout the day.

“Accurate AI is crucial. Preventing the behaviors observed in the study is key to decreasing distracted driving accidents, which last year saw more U.S. pedestrians killed than at any other time in the last 40 years,” Johnson said. “… Accident prevention is made possible through risk detection that is both instant and precise. This can be the difference between preventing an accident and picking up the pieces after it happens. So things that drive these risk-detection behaviors and awareness are going to be key considerations.”

According to Idelic, seatbelt usage is not a high priority when it comes to assessing driver behavior. Brian Filip, Chief Technology Officer at Idelic, explains that while driver-facing cameras often capture instances of drivers not wearing seatbelts, Idelic does not heavily consider this factor in their scoring system for accident risk. Instead, they focus more on indicators such as drowsiness and phone usage, which are more commonly associated with accidents.

“I think from an overall risk mitigation perspective, I can’t think of any reason why a fleet carrier shouldn’t be very actively enforcing their seatbelt policy,” he said. “When I say that we don’t weight this heavily. We don’t weight it as heavily in terms of the likelihood that they will get into an accident. If you get into an accident, obviously having the seatbelt on is critical, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate that you’re more likely to get into an accident.”

Idelic enhances fleet safety by collecting and analyzing data from telematics sensors, cameras, FMCSA records, training data, and accident data. Through advanced machine learning models, the company identifies high-risk drivers who are likely to be involved in accidents within the next 90 days. In addition, Idelic offers coaching tools to help fleets mitigate risks.

Telematics providers are striving to improve their AI and machine learning capabilities to address unsafe driver behaviors. However, there are two key challenges. First, they lack comprehensive data visibility as they don’t have access to context from other sources such as FMCSA and accident data. Second, their focus is primarily on training rather than coaching, and they are trying to automate the coaching process using video to reduce the burden on back-office staff.

In terms of driver intervention, Filip, a representative from Idelic, believes that a more human-centered approach with less automation is more effective. This is why Idelic emphasizes the distinction between training and coaching.

“Training, we usually see that as more of a broad approach to serve all drivers with a baseline of knowledge. We see the training is often being used if there is a serious event being detected by the telematics provider … We always recommend to our customers that they should still be monitoring their telematics alerts dashboard every day for the serious events and that they should be immediately having conversations with the drivers about that specific event,” Filip said. “Where Idelic really helps is seeing the trends that aren’t as obvious from a single event and letting them know where the risk is associated with that. In those situations, we push more for coaching. Training is the giving of information in a manner that instructs a group or an individual. Coaching is a developmental approach to working with and interacting with those people. So training tends to be more of a one-way conversation: watch the video, read the PowerPoint, listen to the lecture. Whereas coaching is more of a two-way conversation. ‘Tell me what you’re doing in the cab. Why are you doing that? Do you understand this alternative? Have you tried this?’ It’s really interacting with the driver to try to have a greater impact.”

According to Warlick, Lytx has uncovered that a driver safety program is most effective when training and coaching are used in combination; however, the real deficiency lies in not having a dashcam or telematics system at all.

Source: CCJ Digital

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