If you bought it, it’s likely that a truck brought it. Every day, 24/7/365 truck drivers are crossing not only the nation, but roads across the globe delivering goods to our homes, our local stores, hospitals, warehouses, plants, and beyond.

It’s a tough job, completed by over 3 million men and women in the U.S. alone. More often than not, those same people represent small businesses with over 95% of the 750,000 trucking companies in the U.S. owning and operating 10 or fewer trucks (source: American Trucking Associations (ATA) Economic Update).  

Drivers, while often small businesspeople or employed by small businesses, also represent larger organizations including Blue Yonder’s customers such as Logistics Service Providers (LSPs, 3PLs and 4PLs) and shippers including manufacturers and retailers who are moving their own goods, via their own private fleet, 3PLs or for-hire fleets to warehouses, plants, stores and even along the last-mile for home delivery.

As a software provider, Blue Yonder works to simplify the lives of our customers, including the drivers they represent, by providing easy-to-use solutions that connect the supply chain, from end-to-end. By doing so, we enable our customers to do what they do best – produce, sell or move goods – allowing them the time they need to work not only with their drivers and carrier network, but also their warehouse labor and in-store resources, ensuring higher quality products and service for their customers.

Making the Supply Chain Better for Drivers

Drivers today face one of the hardest jobs in the supply chain, laden with regulations, tight deadlines, endless miles, and even parking problems. Small steps to make things easier for them can make a significant impact not only on their lives, but also on the quality and ease of your deliveries. Software solutions including transportation management systems (TMS), warehouse management systems (WMS) and yard management systems (YMS), increase efficiencies not only for transportation and logistics teams, but also for drivers themselves.

  • Using the right TMS, drivers have the flexibility to choose routes that work for them both professionally – does it pay what they need – and personally – can they be home for their child’s soccer game that weekend.
  • Drivers also rely on their relationship with fleet managers, dispatchers and 3PLs. By automating the work of supply chain executives and transportation managers wherever possible, a solid TMS allows for better and more accurate driver communications and support. The importance of accurate information such as appointment times and delivery locations, as provided by a 3PL or shipper to a carrier cannot be understated. A solid, integrated TMS makes that level of accuracy and detail possible.
  • Optimized load building also helps build safer and more efficient loads, allowing better odds for drivers in making safe deliveries that are on-time and in-full (OTIF), and providing better quality outcomes for the customer.
  • When it comes to the yard, drivers benefit from a YMS that respects a driver’s time. With a YMS, yard and warehouse managers can streamline the driver’s experience by enabling automated check-in and accurate tracking with the yard, allowing them to avoid long lines and time wasted waiting for a dock to be available.
  • Driver centered yard management also requires awareness of live loads, those loads in which the driver is waiting with the trailer, so that they can be prioritized appropriately. Shippers and 3PLs in turn benefit from that same time savings by potentially reducing detention fees from the carrier and improving ever-critical relationships with their carriers and drivers.
  • Drivers also are impacted by a successful warehouse, that is empowered by a quality WMS solution designed with dynamic scheduling, integrated TMS and WMS solutions that connect the load to the warehouse’s needs and availability, and accurate doc and appointment management that get drivers in and on their way faster and more efficiently.
  • Blue Yonder’s Logistics Provider customers including 3PLs, 4PLs and others who manage logistics for their customers, can take this one step further with their TMS by paying drivers quickly and for the miles they drive, and by providing accurate load details and consistent communications to their carriers.

With over 3,000 Logistics Provider (3PLs), retailer and manufacturing customers worldwide, Blue Yonder knows the value of drivers to not our global economy, but to the goods we use ourselves. In celebration of National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, we’d like to say “Thank you drivers! Day in, day out, you keep the supply chain moving and we at Blue Yonder are grateful every day for you and your work.”