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Trucker Tools' Prasad Gollapalli Featured on Adrian Gonzalez' Talking Logistics Program

Wide-ranging podcast interview covers the rise of digital freight-matching, overcoming market inefficiencies, solving the capacity crunch, and why trying to "disintermediate" brokers will fail

RESTON, Va., April 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a new episode of the online video podcast Talking Logistics, Prasad Gollapalli, founder and CEO of Trucker Tools Smart Capacity, and Adrian Gonzalez, the show's host and president of Adelante SCM, go deep and wide into a discussion of today's trucking capacity crunch, and how new technologies and smarter approaches to freight matching offer rapid, positive change that will reinvigorate the broker community.

The segment dives into the challenge of finding trucks for available loads in a capacity-constrained market, the concepts of "dark capacity, "predictive visibility" and "one-load wonders," and how emerging freight-matching technologies are driving dramatic new efficiencies into how freight brokers and forwarders manage and operate their businesses.

Gonzalez recently published a commentary on the segment at the Talking Logistics website. The full conversation between Gonzalez and Gollapalli can be viewed here.

“If you look at the traditional brokerage process today, brokers are making 30-60 calls to cover a load, using information from load boards, emails, spreadsheets — but they’re handling a lot of stale information,” said Gollapalli in the podcast. “For example, you’re a broker calling a carrier. You probably saw this carrier on a load board who had posted his availability a day or a few hours earlier. By the time you call the carrier, he is no longer available. The underlying problem is that you are dealing with a lot of stale, historical information, instead of real-time, accurate information."

Gollapalli also cited the cost of "one-load wonders."  He explains: "It's expensive for a broker to find and qualify a carrier to cover a load. Over 80-90% of qualified carriers fall off the broker’s radar after delivering one load. These ‘one-load wonders’, combined with the high number of calls, drive up the broker’s cost to cover a load."

"With Smart Capacity, you can convert that 'one load wonder' into repeat business," he adds. "Now you get multiple loads out of that carrier and thus, spread that initial cost to find and qualify a carrier over many loads -- not just one. Additionally, you also reduce the number of calls to cover a load as you work with real-time, available information. As a result,the cost of covering each load goes down significantly with Smart Capacity."

Not surprisingly, technology is playing a critical role to improve the process, as well as accuracy and timeliness of information, notes Gonzalez. "For example, we’ve seen a lot of interest and demand for real-time freight visibility solutions in recent years, enabled by smartphones, mobile apps, and other GPS-enabled devices," he says. "The real-time visibility provided by these devices enables companies to take proactive action if things don’t go according to plan — they can reschedule, resequence, or reroute pickups or deliveries proactively."

Gonzalez notes that with freight-matching technologies, "visibility" has a different definition — and role — than traditional market understanding.  "It's not visibility to a truck with a load or a shipment in transit. It's visibility to precisely where and when that capacity will be available, the time frame in which it will become available, and how to most efficiently optimize that capacity. And where that capacity will be two, three days, even a week ahead. That's where these new load-matching technologies are really making a difference."

"We are not only able to see where the truck is right now, but we can also look into the future to determine where and when that truck is going to be available next,” said Gollapalli. By having forward visibility to available capacity and coupling it with available loads and applying certain business rules, brokers are able match loads with capacity much faster and more efficiently than they do today.

While there are many startups that are trying to disintermediate the brokerage industry, Gollapalli believes that the best path forward for a technology provider is to make brokers and the freight matching process smarter and more efficient. "This is still a business of people and relationships. The broker's knowledge and expertise are invaluable to both truckers and shippers. Our approach is to enable the broker to work faster, better and smarter. We're a trusted partner giving them tools to reduce wasteful, manual activity, to cover more loads with the same amount of people."

Trucker Tools provides predictive freight-matching and capacity management tools through its Smart Capacity platform.  Introduced in September 2017, the platform recently signed up its 50th freight-broker customer, reaching this key milestone after only six months on the market.

Smart Capacity is a SAAS-based application suite built for the freight broker and third-party logistics community. It bridges the gap between brokers and carriers as a next-generation, predictive freight matching and carrier connectivity platform. It's designed to help brokers streamline the process of finding and securing available capacity, and then more efficiently managing the process from load acceptance through pickup and in-transit status, to delivery and settlement.

Smart Capacity also is integrated with major supply chain and transportation management system (TMS) technology providers, including McLeod Software's PowerBroker, Mercury Gate International, High Jump Software, Tailwind Transportation Software for brokers, and Strategy Live's fleet management software.

About Trucker Tools - Trucker Tools, based in Reston, Va., is the leading provider of trip planning, shipment visibility and freight matching solutions for the transportation industry. The company’s popular driver smart-phone app has been downloaded by some 500,000 owner-operators and small-carrier drivers to access information and services conveniently while on the road. Load Track is a robust feature in the app that connects drivers with carriers and freight brokers to eliminate manual check calls. Its groundbreaking Smart Capacity platform uses accurate, real-time data and powerful algorithms to optimally match freight by predicting when and where capacity will become available, days in advance.  Visit Trucker Tools at www.truckertools.com or contact us directly at sales@truckertools.com

Media Contact:
Gary Frantz
Trucker Tools
(925) 594-1434
garynfrantz@hotmail.com 

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