In recent years, there’s been a lot of talk about the promise and the perils of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as what this technology could mean for businesses and individuals. At this point, AI is a major player in almost every industry you can think of, including transportation. Read on for six key ways the AI is helping transform the trucking industry!
1. Autonomous Trucks
Autonomous trucks are likely to be the most transformative use of AI in the industry. However, the timeline of broad commercial adoption of 100% autonomy is a little further out than you may think. The key will be to master the technical challenges of logging sufficient miles across different terrains and weather conditions, which could take decades.
2. Dispatch and Routing
A manager of a larger fleet with hundreds of drivers can use AI to optimize load availability and driver utilization. AI can process available data, such as a driver’s history of load rates and safety records, to determine who should take each load. We also have access to weather-based AI tools to identify the risks of disruptions based on inclement weather.
3. Workflow Automation
Even with the advances in digitalization, trucking remains largely a paper-driven industry. AI can speed up this transition in many ways, particularly by streamlining data entry. AI-powered load builders can look at emails and rate confirmations to parse out key dates, terms, and locations. Even now, this can save carriers 10 hours of manual order entry a week.
4. Safety and Compliance
Using AI to improve safety and compliance is all about the insights we can glean from ELDs and dashcams. These devices record high-risk moments from which we can learn, and AI can use pattern recognition to alert drivers and prevent bad outcomes. It can also report this data to insurance agents, who can then provide coaching opportunities to fleet managers.
5. Fraud Prevention
The negative side of load bookings going digital is that security attacks are more streamlined as well. In trucking, this is particularly relevant when it comes to double brokerage, or the illegal act of a carrier transferring a load to another trucking company without telling the shipper. AI can use large data sets to deduce double brokerage risks and identify repeat offenders.
6. Consumer Insights
The abundance of data AI has to work with can also add a lot of value to the customer experience. Trucking companies can gain insights into consumer behavior and market trends and use them to make more personalized offers to their customers. This will ensure your customers feel listened to, which may drastically boost their loyalty and satisfaction.