The pressure was on Wednesday for 21 companies that are competing at FreightWaves’ F3: Future of Freight Festival for not only the best demo of the event, but for any potential customers in the audience.

J.B. Hunt

Mark Brewer, director of product innovation and data insights at J.B. Hunt, kicked off Day Two’s round of demos with a look under the hood of Shipper 360, the Lowell, Arkansas-based company’s platform for freight finding and payments.

Brewer walked the audience through a range of capacity volatility metrics that shippers can view by region or market. He also showed off a platform performance screen containing metrics like number of truckloads executed or offers per load, as well as a facility insights tab that assigns star ratings to facilities based on driver reviews of safety, accessibility, wait times and other features.

Brewer finished out the seven minutes with Shipper 360’s load characteristics view, which allows shippers to separate out attributes like miles traveled, day of the week shipped and whether the delivery was made on time.

Trimble Maps

Despite its name, Trimble Maps does a whole lot more than just mapping and routing. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the company also brings carriers and shippers together in more ways than one.

Rishi Mehra, vice president of strategy and operations, and Kelly Loizos, product manager, first showed off the Trimble Transportation Industry Cloud. The platform links shippers’ and carriers’ transportation management systems with application programming interfaces and uses truck, lane and location data to identify dwell times, match loads to lanes and identify needs for maintenance.

Then, Trimble brought out Engage Lane, a tool that connects carriers and shippers to enable bidding on contracted freight. It provides scorecards for both stakeholders and uses a shipper’s specifications to find the optimal carrier and lane for each load. As for carriers, they can see which shippers are offering loads that fit their own preferences.

Transforce

Alexandria, Virginia-based Transforce doesn’t think the driver shortage is the biggest problem in freight. In the company’s opinion, it’s the friction in the driver-job matching process that’s giving hiring managers headaches.

Senior Director of Carrier Marketing Kelly McGurk walked attendees through Transforce’s TS1 platform to show how it can make it easier for both drivers and carriers to find work. Carrier profiles on the platform include job listings, each of which includes key information about the job like the location, the weekly schedule and what training is required. On the other side of the equation, drivers can specify what features they’re looking for in a job.

Then, the company’s algorithm spits out a curated feed of job listings based on overlap between drivers’ and carriers’ preferences. Drivers can then click to apply and upload a scan of their CDL — if they don’t fit the bill for the job, it’ll use that new information to recommend alternatives. Finally, carriers can see a list of applicants with a view of their qualifications and contact information.

Turvo

Turvo is bringing transportation providers collaboration power and increased visibility. 

Jeff Graan, vice president of sales and engineering, displayed Turvo’s dashboard in the application that has each detail regarding a given load consolidated into tiles that users can click on one at a time without having to leave the page. This allows customers to view multiple details of different categories simultaneously, such as appointment details and GPS tracking.

An additional feature added to the TMS is visibility into container traffic by providing GPS tracking on vessels as well as the number of last free days once it is at the port. There is also a new search functionality with which users can search for loads by customer or carrier name.

Once in a load, users can view who else has touched and made adjustments for accountability. A messaging board is also included in the program, enhancing communications with the carriers, shippers or anyone else involved in the transaction.

Alvys

As a software company based in Solana Beach, California, Alvys is changing the way that driver leaders in small to midsize transportation companies plan and coordinate with their drivers. A dispatch planner shows a timeline of when drivers will finish their other loads so that planners know which drivers can meet appointment times.

If a driver requests time off from work, planners can block out those dates so that any other planners who may be working on those days do not plan the driver on loads, providing better communication.

All through the app, drivers can check in and out of their destination, as well as upload the bill of lading for proof of delivery. Drivers can also submit requests for advances for fuel or any other additional charges they may encounter on the road, and depending on their limit, they can be approved or rejected.

Descartes

With a load board that offers information on more than 1.2 million lanes, Descartes developed a software system that lets carriers and brokers do nearly everything in one place. An available filter matches the criteria and requirements of the loads with carriers to accept depending on location or mileage, or there is a historical tab where users can see which carriers have run specific lanes in the past and what the rate of pay was.

Once a carrier is interested in a load, there is a communication channel where the broker and carrier can negotiate a rate. If the carrier that the broker is trying to book is not registered in the broker’s system, the onboarding process can be done through the mobile app that drivers download.

The software then sends the results of the onboarding back to the broker, which can determine whether to move forward by sending the rate confirmation to the carrier.

More demos on tap for Thursday

As F3 wraps up, make sure to catch the final round of rapid-fire demos on Day 3! Presenting Thursday at 9:10 a.m. EDT on the General Session Stage will be U.S. Xpress, PalletTrader, Emtec Digital, GoodShip, TruckBook, FleetOps, Highway, FreightFriend and reigning Future of Freight Festival Best in Show champion Hubtek.

Plus — stick around till the end of Day 3 to find out the winner of this year’s Best in Show award! Voting will end one hour after the final block of demos, and attendees can cast virtual ballots in the FreightWaves Events app. Let us know what solutions you think will drive the future of freight!

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