Uber Freight, subsidiary of ride sharing pioneer Uber Technologies, this week announced it is adopting a new standards-based approach to integrating shippers and carriers with its transportation management system that it says will speed bookings and enable more process automation
Supply Chain Digest Says...
|
 |
Uber also said that the new approach to integration will provide more information to participants, such as real-time status on dock activity
|
 |
What do you say? |
| Click here to send us your comments |
 |
| |
|
More specifically, Uber Freight says it is the first in the industry to adopt integrations standards froma group called the Scheduling Standards Consortium (SSC).
SSC was in fact founded in 2022 by now bankrupted new age freight broker Convoy, carrier J.B. Hunt and Uber Freight, with a goal to create freight appointment scheduling standards for shippers and carriers into transportation management systems.
Subsequently, other TMS providers such as Oracle, One Network and BlueYonder and logistics firms including DHL Supply Chain, Ryder System, Lineage Logistics and UPS’ Coyote Logistics unit joined the standards group.
Uber Freight says it is piloting the use of the SSC standard in its application programming interface (API) for its TMS integrations before a full rollout in the second half of 2024.
Does the move matter?
Since the start of the TMS software industry some 40 years ago, whether using a commercial package or a homegrown systems, shippers and carriers have had primarily to deal with TMS integration on a one-off basis to exchange information about a load to be moved, carrier availability, pricing information and more.
That added to the cost of integrations and the time it took to program them. There has been talk about developing standards to address these problems for many years, but there has been little progress.
If Uber Freight can get a sizable number of carriers and shippers using the standard API, it may put some pressure on others to move in that direction.
“Across the industry, scheduling inefficiency not only contributes to a significant cost in servicing the load, but also causes delays in getting appointments set and increases the lead time required to get the load serviced,” Uber Freight said in its announcement.
(See More Below)
 It added that the company's brokerage saw early success in getting loads from shippers made available to carriers with zero human intervention, adding that loads are ready for carriers to consider as much as 75% faster compared to manual scheduling.
Uber also said that the new approach to integration will provide more information to participants, such as real-time status on dock activity.
Carriers, Uber added, can benefit in part from improved appointment and load data accuracy.
In 2021, Uber Freight acquired 3PL Transplace, which had a substantial TMS that SCDigest believes is the basis with improvements for the upgraded Uber TMS.
Any thoughts on Uber Freight? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
|
