This week, we celebrated an internal milestone by hitting our first quarter visibility goal — the first target we identified for ourselves on our quest for 100% visibility by the end of 2019.

To understand why we took on this initiative, we’ve got to throw it back to 2018 — a year most people stationed in the transportation departments of large shippers would like to forget. It was a budget-busting year for most, due in large part to the way contracted business fell to the spot market.

However, there was another factor that played a huge role: compliance fees imposed by major retailers. If you deliver into any big box retailer, chances are you are intimately familiar with these fees. As retailers fight to maintain their market share, they are laser-focused on what we refer to as #supplychaingoals — no stock-outs, but no backroom inventory, either. Supply and demand precision. And that means they want all of their orders on time and in full, or they’ll be knocking at your door with the bill.

To maintain their bottom line, shippers are realizing the need for transportation providers that deliver on time. At Tucker, we’re thrilled! We’ve always prided ourselves on providing top-notch service. Our track and trace procedures are second to none and our on-time metrics speak for themselves:

However, we realize that we need to take it one step further to improve our shippers’ supply chain efficiency. To that end, we announced our freight visibility initiative late last year, ensuring that every shipment we book has real-time location visibility 24/7/365.

This type of connection (whether by ELD, TMS or app tracking) provides valuable reporting data right at your fingertips. It also opens up the doors for us to spend more time mining your shipment history to provide cost-saving recommendations and presenting opportunities for increased efficiency — a real value-add for our customers.

As a non-asset-based 3PL with carrier connections spanning the past 58 years, 100% visibility is no easy task — but we’re firm believers that it’s worth doing. Our internal cross-departmental committee is vetting technology partners, identifying non-compliant carriers, troubleshooting tracking connections, and designing a seamless customer experience, to make this important initiative a reality. Each month we announce our progress internally and reinforce the new procedures we’re implementing. We’ve made this quote our electronic visibility mantra: “We don’t grow when things are easy. We grow when we face challenges.” We’re excited to face this challenge, grow our base of shippers, and pioneer a new level of transportation service — once again!

Learn more about our commitment to digital, GPS-based truckload visibility.