C.H. Robinson Automates a Task the Freight Industry Does 1 Billion Times a Year
February 07 2024 - 12:00PM
Business Wire
New tech for touchless appointments is a
breakthrough for supply chain efficiency, while saving shippers
time and money
Global logistics company C.H. Robinson has developed new
technology that creates a major efficiency in freight shipping:
removing the work of scheduling an appointment at the place a load
needs to be picked up and scheduling another appointment where the
load needs to be delivered. Across the U.S. trucking industry, more
than 1 billion of these appointments are made each year, commonly
through phone calls and emails.
With touchless appointments, the entire process is automated and
can be done 24/7 with no manual intervention. The technology also
uses artificial intelligence to determine the optimal appointment –
based on transit-time data from C.H. Robinson’s millions of
shipments across 300,000 shipping lanes, facility data such as peak
dwell time, and the most convenient time windows for carriers.
When C.H. Robinson first tackled this challenge, the company’s
research showed that 74% of shippers wanted greater automation in
their supply chains. In a 2024 C.H. Robinson customer survey,
shippers indicate that more-efficient appointment scheduling is
their second-biggest tech priority for supply chains this year.
“Achieving touchless appointments is a big step forward for
automating supply chains,” said Michael Castagnetto, C.H.
Robinson’s President of North American Surface Transportation.
“It’s far more efficient for technology to find an appointment slot
that’s open, that works for both the loading dock and the carrier,
and gets the freight where it needs to be on time. Touchless
appointments liberate shippers and their receivers from that work,
and because we have the largest dataset in the industry, our system
is choosing a smarter appointment than our competitors can.”
C.H. Robinson, which moves more truckload freight than anyone in
North America, is doing touchless appointments for 2,545 customers
so far at more than 25,000 facilities. Retailers and food companies
are among the biggest beneficiaries.
This tech advancement is
- Saving shippers time: Instead of spending all day
juggling incoming appointment requests, shippers enjoy touchless
appointments completed in less than 2 minutes with zero time
spent.
- Getting shippers’ freight on the road faster: Touchless
appointments allow C.H. Robinson to offer a customer’s load to its
carrier network faster, giving carriers better access to freight
while securing better rates for the shipper. For customers with
comparable freight, the average gain in speed-to-market is 7.4
hours.
- Saving shippers money: The faster a load is offered and
booked, the more likely the shipper can avoid paying a premium for
a carrier to drive out of their way. Data-informed appointments
also help eliminate the chargebacks and fines shippers face from
their customers because of freight arriving too early, freight
arriving too late or appointments being rescheduled at the last
minute – which can add up to more than the cost of the
transportation itself.
“The trucking industry has been hungry to digitize everything
from load-matching to booking to real-time visibility while freight
is in transit,” said Arun Rajan, a technology pioneer who first
joined C.H. Robinson as Chief Product Officer and is now Chief
Operating Officer. “Giving people better digital tools to use is
great progress; actually automating the complex processes of
logistics is another frontier. That’s why automation has largely
not yet reached appointment scheduling. It’s a big focus for us –
in terms of driving efficiencies in our customers’ operations and
our own – and we’re proud to be paving the way for the industry.
”
About C.H. Robinson
C.H. Robinson solves logistics problems for companies across the
globe and across industries, from the simple to the most complex.
With $22 billion in freight under management and 19 million
shipments annually, we are one of the world’s largest logistics
platforms. Our global suite of services accelerates trade to
seamlessly deliver the products and goods that drive the world’s
economy. With the combination of our multimodal transportation
management system and expertise, we use our information advantage
to deliver smarter solutions for more than 90,000 customers and
450,000 contract carriers on our platform. Our technology is built
by and for supply chain experts to bring faster, more meaningful
improvements to our customers’ businesses. As a responsible global
citizen, we are also proud to contribute millions of dollars to
support causes that matter to our company, our Foundation and our
employees. For more information, visit us at www.chrobinson.com
(Nasdaq: CHRW).
CHRW-IR
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Maria Lettman maria.lettman@chrobinson.com
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