Geofencing for Less-than-truckload (LTL) Visibility: How Accurate Tracking Maximizes Efficiency Across Your Operations

Less-than-truckload shipping is an essential part of the supply chain and logistics landscape. Shippers don’t always need a full truckload, naturally, making LTL an ideal option. But LTL shipping is rife with challenges and complexities, including difficult-to-manage delivery timelines, intricate pricing structures, and, most prominently, struggles with LTL visibility and real-time tracking.

Traditionally, LTL requires more sophisticated tracking, given that shipments share a ride with others on a vehicle that makes multiple stops. Achieving real-time LTL visibility requires modern technology that addresses and overcomes these challenges.

At Kestrel Insights, our polygon geofencing database can play an integral role in the solution.

Understanding the LTL Visibility Challenge

Traditional geofencing is designed for simple Point A-to-Point B routes. As noted above, that’s not how LTL shipping works. For geofencing to track LTL shipments, the shipper needs accurate geofences that trigger specific updates at each touchpoint.

Another LTL intricacy compounds this issue. Imagine an LTL truck delivering shipments in a congested commercial area. During one stop, the driver makes a delivery on one side of the street and on the other. Overlapping geofences can create significant confusion regarding arrival and departure statuses.

Geofencing that effectively tracks LTL shipments also requires stacked tolerances. For example, if the first delivery in an LTL route is 10 minutes late, that initial late delivery trickles through the entire schedule. Without stacked tolerances, estimating transit times and communicating with customers is impossible.

Kestrel Insights Role in LTL Shipping Success

Our hyper-precise geofences mitigate confusion and ensure accurate communication across all stakeholders. If you’re delivering industrial equipment, office furniture, manufacturing supplies, or similar items in a commercial area with many businesses, you can proactively communicate with customers so they know exactly when to expect the shipment's arrival — which enhances the customer experience. Our solution is also scalable, whether you have 10 shippers or 100, 30 customer contacts or 300.

Kestrel Insights' polygon geofencing allows for geofencing even the most irregular boundaries, eliminating the need for manual, error-prone setups that are so common with traditional geofencing. Flock Freight is a Kestrel Insights customer that leverages Kestrel’s polygon geofencing database for LTL tracking and visibility.

Flock Freight uses our geofences to improve tracking accuracy and streamline communication. All notifications it sends through platforms like Project44 are based on precise, real-time data. Flock Freight, aware of the many challenges with traditional approaches to LTL tracking and visibility, found that our geofencing delivered the best solution for modern-day LTL demands.

“Kestrel’s geofencing technology and daily automated location updates are a game-changer for the efficiency and accuracy of our tracking operations,” said Lu Saenz, CTO at Flock Freight. “Our focus on operational excellence enables us to unlock material savings opportunities for our customers via Shared Truckload, without compromising on service expectations.”

How  Kestrel Insights Helps LTL Operations

Automated polygon geofencing by Kestrel Insights is the solution that allows for real-time tracking and visibility. When you use our tools for LTL visibility, you’re able to:

• Enhance visibility across all touchpoints: Accurate geofences monitor each stop on an LTL route, ensuring that updates are both timely and reliable. This benefit directly responds to the primary challenge traditionally faced in LTL tracking.
• Reduce false alerts while increasing accuracy: Better geofencing allows you to create better, more timely alerts for your customers — which is key to creating outstanding experiences that increase loyalty and repeat business.
• Scale to accommodate complex networks: Our geofencing responds with the visibility needed across as many stops as an LTL route includes. Our solutions can handle large-scale deployments without sacrificing precision.

The LTL tracking and visibility conundrum no longer needs to hold your organization back. With the right technology, you can achieve real-time LTL visibility, giving your team operational benefits and providing the level of communication needed to create outstanding customer experiences.

Bring Efficiency and Accuracy to Your LTL Shipping

Join the list of companies using advanced geofencing for precision LTL tracking and visibility. The benefits of streamlined operations, reduced errors, and an enhanced reputation for reliable service can be yours when you add automated polygon geofencing to your existing tech stack.

Many of our users take advantage of our integrations to leading platforms like Project44, Samsara, and Motive, which allow them to enjoy the benefits of a robust polygon geofencing database (and capabilities like LTL visibility) without altering their existing systems or workflows.

Interested in learning more? Get in touch to discuss how our geofencing solutions can transform visibility and simplify complex LTL networks.

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