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Effective URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/truck-drivers-bear-big-burden-on-data-collection-some-companies-want-to-change-that-37f...
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Some Companies Want to Change That. Share Resize 8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen (2 min) This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/truck-drivers-bear-big-burden-on-data-collection-some-companies-want-to-change-that-37fe8324 1. CIO Journal TRUCK DRIVERS BEAR BIG BURDEN ON DATA COLLECTION. SOME COMPANIES WANT TO CHANGE THAT. ESTES EXPRESS LINES IS LOOKING TO AUTOMATE MORE DATA COLLECTION AND STREAMLINE DATA SHARING TO REDUCE THE BURDEN ON TRUCKERS AND DOCKWORKERS TO TRACK GOODS By Isabelle Bousquette April 26, 2023 9:00 am ET Share Resize 8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen (2 min) Former truck driver Darren Suarez is terminal manager at Estes Express Lines’ Pine Brook loading dock in New Jersey. Photo: Isabelle Bousquette Being a truck driver in the 1980s was terrible. Just ask former driver Darren Suarez, who spent years perched in boiling hot cabs with no air conditioning and only crank-down windows. But it wasn’t just the discomfort: The paperwork was voluminous. Mr. Suarez recalls how he would have to write down information about shipment sizes and pickup times at red lights, scribbling so quickly that his notes were often unreadable even to himself. Truck cabs today typically have air conditioning, and a lot else has changed since then, but one thing hasn’t: Drivers are still tasked with collecting and keeping track of detailed shipment data for logistics companies. And although that process has transitioned from paper to digital via app, drivers still bear the brunt of that burden—and it is one of the modern supply chain’s major inefficiencies. “Every time I go out on a terminal visit, I will have at least one driver or one dockworker look at me and refer to themselves as having sausage fingers,” said Estes Express Lines Chief Information Officer Todd Florence. “They didn’t sign on to want to be a data-entry clerk. It’s frustrating for them.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. Preview Subscribe -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now the trucking industry’s digital evolution may be at a tipping point, driven by the rise in e-commerce, the supply-chain challenges laid bare during the pandemic and customer demand for more real-time tracking, among other forces. Some CIOs are looking to reduce the amount of tedious and repetitive data collection drivers are doing by better integrating data from other company systems, tapping better software and investing in automated data-collecting devices like cameras and sensors. The upshot, Mr. Florence said, could be more accurate and more real-time data. For Richmond, Va.-based Estes and other trucking companies, real-time data is increasingly vital to optimizing operations and planning pickups, deliveries and driver assignments most efficiently—as well as providing greater visibility to customers. “Frankly it just comes down to: If you don’t have the data, you’re not going to get the customer,” said Avery Vise, a vice president at freight research firm FTR Transportation Intelligence. Still, the system at many companies is far from optimal. In most cases, drivers and dockworkers are typing in information, taking pictures and scanning bar codes throughout a package’s life cycle, said Mr. Florence. Sometimes they are inputting the same information over and over in multiple formats—and the data may already exist in other company systems, Mr. Florence said. The process is prone to errors and frustrating for employees, added the CIO, whose company is the largest privately held freight transportation company in North America. Here are some of the ways Estes, which employs more than 10,000 drivers and makes roughly 50,000 deliveries a day, is working to automate its system and solve tracking problems: STREAMLINE DATA SHARING Estes Express Lines truck driver Juan Gonzalez shows the app used for keeping track of detailed shipment data. Photo: Isabelle Bousquette Breaking down silos between data in different company systems could be one solution, Mr. Florence said. If all the information about a given piece of freight—including information collected by drivers, tracked by office workers and sent in directly from customers—flowed into one single location, there would be less need to collect data that the company may already have elsewhere. To make that a reality, Mr. Florence said he has built a digital twin, which acts as a virtual representation of each piece of freight passing through the network, and can function as that single location. The platform was built leveraging data-management platform Denodo as the foundation, he said. Building out the platform meant that, for example, when a customer inputs information about freight, the driver won’t separately have to upload all the same information when picking it up. So far the company said it has internal savings of about 10% in infrastructure and labor costs by eliminating the need to duplicate or store data across multiple platforms. It is continuing to scale out the platform across the company. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue DIGITIZE DATA FASTER Better software also could help lighten the burden, Mr. Florence said. Typically when freight is picked up, the customer provides a bill of lading, which contains the complete address of the shipper and consignee, number of pieces, description, weight and other key information. It is still industry standard for this bill to be a physical piece of paper, said Evan Armstrong, president of Armstrong & Associates Inc., a logistics-industry research group. Mr. Florence said the company is now working to roll out a system where drivers would be able to just take a photo of the bill and upload it—rather than typing in each piece of information into the app. As the system rolls out, back-end employees are looking at the photo and doing the manual data input themselves, Mr. Florence said. SUPPLY CHAINS HAVE CHANGED FOREVER Nearshoring. Automation. Supplier diversification. Sustainability. Here’s how companies are reshaping their logistics. Here’s How Supply Chains Are Being Reshaped for a New Era of Global Trade The Shift to Nearshoring Brings Production Hurdles Closer to Home SEC's Climate-Disclosure Rule Isn’t Here, but It May as Well Be, Many Businesses Say Truck Drivers Bear Big Burden on Data Collection. Some Companies Want to Change That. A Cyberattack Forced a Logistics Company to Temporarily Halt Operations CFOs Focus on Building Resilient Supply Chains, Even as Pandemic Disruptions Fade Investors Continue to Back Logistics Tech Private Investors Looking to Capitalize on Nearshoring Trends Turn to Mexico But the ultimate goal is to leverage optical character recognition, or OCR, technology and artificial intelligence to automate that process. Using OCR and AI on the bill of lading would be much more challenging than on standardized forms, such as checks, since each customer can format its bill of lading in its own unique way as there is no clear industry standard, Mr. Florence said. “So we want to get to a point where we’re extracting that data out of the image for those customers so that my driver doesn’t have to enter it in,” said Mr. Florence. Automate data collection Mr. Florence also is looking for more automated ways to collect data, such as cameras and sensors. For example, in the Estes Pine Brook loading dock in New Jersey, there are ground sensors that automatically collect information on tire pressure as tires run over them—a task that was previously manual, performed with tire pressure gauges or other instruments. “We used to kick them,” said Mr. Suarez, who is now retired from driving and works as the terminal manager at Estes’s Pine Brook loading dock. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS Who does your company rely on to collect data, and could those processes be more efficient? Join the conversation below. GPS and telematics data, mounted cameras and other devices on trailers also have provided information that drivers used to have to manually keep track of, including hours of work and locations, said Kyle Perillo, operations manager at Estes. According to Mr. Vise, companies have the opportunity to leverage devices like sensors more than they already do to automate more data collection. For example, he said, at the moment, drivers typically need to signal when they have made a delivery, but using cameras or sensors could allow for automatic signals about the movement of that freight. However, Mr. Vise said he doesn’t know of any companies doing that, and scaled-out deployment of such solutions are likely further in the future. Despite challenges, the transformation at Estes is ongoing, according to Mr. Florence. He also said he expects a big payoff given the tens of thousands of deliveries a day. “If I only save my city driver two minutes per pickup a day…that’s a lot of time. And that’s a lot of dollars.” Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 Appeared in the April 27, 2023, print edition as 'Truck Drivers Bear Data-Collection Burden'. 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