Load One Transportation & Logistics: Driving Efficiency  

Load One Transportation & Logistics, based in Taylor, Michigan, is the third largest asset-based expedited freight carrier in the United States. With a fleet of 400 trucks, Load One hauls cargo for a variety of industries, including automotive, manufacturing, aerospace, hazmat, trade shows and even art exhibitions throughout the lower 48 states and Ontario, Canada.

Founded in 2003, Load One began as an asset-based regional truckload carrier and freight broker. The company moved into expediting in 2006 and that service has grown to be the largest part of its operations.

Load One has earned a reputation as an industry leader in the use of technology. Its use of technology to improve the customer and driver experience was most recently recognized by Carrier Commercial Journal as its 2019 Innovator of the Year.

Challenge

Expedite: meaning “to accelerate the process or progress of; speed up.” As an expedited freight carrier, that’s exactly the challenge with which Load One is faced on each and every one of its runs.

“Time is money, and when we handle expedited critical freight it’s especially true for us,” said Load One CEO John Elliott. “If you can save 5, 10, or 15 minutes by bypassing a scale, and you start quantifying that across the fleet on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, it really adds up to make a difference. It’s not only financially beneficial for us, but it also provides better service that we can offer our customers.”

With the advent of mandatory ELDs, those minutes in savings have become even more critical. “With hours of service and the electronic logs coming into effect, we were looking for an integrated system that could leverage the ELD’s capabilities and would improve our efficiency on the road,” Elliott added.

Solution

Load One researched a number of weigh station bypass services to help with efficiency. What really sold Elliott on Omnitracs Weigh Station Bypass Service provided by Drivewyze was the integration into Load One’s Omnitracs ELDs.

“We did not want to add yet another piece of hardware in the cab,” Elliott said. “So when that integration came into play, we were one of the first carriers to sign up.”

Adopting new technology can often be a cumbersome process, but Elliott found just the opposite to be the case with Drivewyze.

“The customer service teams at Drivewyze and Omnitracs were great about setting us up and, because of that, we were able to launch it painlessly across our fleet,” Elliott said.

Result

Measuring return-on-investment (ROI) for a new product or system can take months or years of data collection and analysis. Again, Elliott found the results with Drivewyze to be overwhelmingly positive almost immediately.

“Our drivers gave us feedback within the first week or two and it was a roaring success,” Elliott said. “The drivers were engaged and very excited about it — I think they would honestly be very upset if we were to take the product away tomorrow.”

Along with improved route times and efficiency, Load One also benefitted from the impact Drivewyze weigh station bypass service has on driver recruitment and retention.

“In this day and age, training drivers is huge for any trucking company. Drivewyze helps to take away one more pain point for our drivers of having to deal with scales and the hassle of being pulled in at scales and undergoing inspections,” Elliott said. “When our drivers saw the benefits of Drivewyze, and how much it helped their day-to-day activity, they quickly became big fans.”