First-Quarter Trucking Outlook

Special Report

C . H . Robinson adopting standard US LTL e-bill of lading

By William B . Cassidy

For one , data that doesn ’ t help calculate accurate estimated times of arrival is no longer being collected , he said . “ Our predictive ETAs for truckload deliveries have improved to better than 98 % accuracy , and for LTL shipments it ’ s 92 %,” he said . That effort is being aided by generative artificial intelligence ( AI ) that sorts through data collected daily by C . H . Robinson .

“ We get about 500,000 points of unstructured data coming to us every day in emails seeking price quotes , and a human has to take that email and pull the relevant data from it ,” he said . Large language models , a foundation for AI , now are being used to pull data .

ATLANTA — The electronic bill of lading ( eBOL ) received a shot of voltage from C . H . Robinson Worldwide Jan . 22 after the largest US third-party logistics provider by revenue said it is adopting the digital shipping standard with 10 of its less-than-truckload ( LTL ) partners .

The move provides an opportunity to greatly expand the use of the digital standard document that has been in development over the past two years by LTL carriers and the Digital LTL Council of the National Motor Freight Traffic Association ( NMFTA ).

“ We ’ ve got the biggest data set , we work with the most carriers , and we felt it was important for us to be involved in leading the way on this ,” C . H . Robinson CEO Dave Bozeman told the Journal of Commerce at the SMC3 JumpStart 2024 Conference .

The electronic document — in the works since 2019 — is the lynchpin of an effort to bring the LTL trucking sector into the digital era . It is designed to replace paper BOLs and help LTL carriers plan freight flow , reducing costs for carriers and shippers alike .

But adoption has been slow , with carriers often using rate discounts to help convince shippers to digitalize . In addition , many shippers using electronic bills have their own application programming interfaces ( APIs ), defeating the idea of standardization .

C . H . Robinson ’ s scale is expected to help spread use of the standard . The eBOL has already been used by more than 17,000 C . H . Robinson shipper customers over the past year , Bozeman said . C . H . Robinson plans to bring additional LTL carriers on board in 2024 .

“ Eliminating that manual work will create efficiencies on the shipper ’ s dock .”

“ We go in and take that data , pull out critical information , add it to our system and in most cases , we ’ re taking a quote pack to that customer in less than a minute ,” Bozeman said . The eBOL , he said , fits into that broader picture and will speed data to shippers .

That speed is needed to help shippers achieve a core goal of becoming more agile in their decision making .

“ We need to use technology to improve analytics ,” he said . “ None of us can be afraid of large language models or AI , or of electronic bills of lading in LTL .”

email : bill . cassidy @ spglobal . com

More than 17,000 C . H . Robinson customers have used the eBOL in the past year . Shutterstock . com

Manual to digital

For many shippers , preparing bills of lading is a manual process , Bozeman said . Handwritten paper bills of lading are collected with a shipment and handed off to a freight clerk at an LTL terminal who keys the data into the carrier ’ s management system . That delays planning for evening linehaul runs and often introduces errors .

“ Eliminating that manual work will create efficiencies on the shipper ’ s dock ,” Bozeman said .

It also will make LTL freight easier to track as it flows through terminals to its destination , which ties in well with C . H . Robinson ’ s broader technology aims .

“ We ’ re taking a different approach to real-time visibility ,” Bozeman said .

www . joc . com February 12 , 2024 | Journal of Commerce 33