C.H. Robinson developed new technology that removes 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.
“Achieving touchless appointments is a big step forward for automating supply chains,” says 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.”
Key takeaways:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 because of freight arriving too early, freight arriving too late or appointments being rescheduled at the last minute.
“The trucking industry has been hungry to digitize everything from load-matching to booking to real-time visibility while freight is in transit,” says Arun Rajan, 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.”
