Ep. 07: Digitization Brings Transparency, Efficiency, & Trust with Todd Polen and Scooter Sayers

Cargo Shorts

There are many reasons for shippers and carriers to share information including better planning, better pricing, and cost savings. It benefits all parties to work together to improve transparency, efficiency, and trust. Business expectations are rapidly changing, therefore it is important to come together to talk about using digitalization in transportation and how it can lead to enhanced visibility and transparency.

Joining host Jonathan Betz are Todd Polen, the VP of Pricing Services for Old Dominion Freight Line, and Scooter Sayers, President of Sayers Logistics, an LTL Consultancy. In this discussion, they address how clarity can lead to benefits such as improved planning, better communication or sharing of information, and most importantly increased trust between companies and customers.

Key Takeaways:

How digitization helps to improve transparency in business operations. [0:47]

How will the NMFTA’s new single standard eBOL benefit the transportation industry, and how is Old Dominion responding? [6:08]

How will digitization help control business costs in the transportation industry? [9:40]

How should carriers help shippers digitize their operations? [11:00]

What is missing in the relationship between shippers and carriers, and how can a “Shipper Scorecard” remedy the issue? [13:21]

Where are the friction points for adopting new technologies in the transportation industry? [16:47]

What is the future of transparency and pricing within the shipping industry? [21:30]

Shareables:

“When you have transparency, when you have visibility through digitization, that’s going to help you reduce errors. It’s going to help you get big data fast in the fields that you need to operate with. It turns events and exceptions into actionable data that you can actually work with and it promotes standardization.” — Scooter Sayers, President, Sayers Logistics & LTL Consultancy

“If a carrier can reduce their cost by saving fuel, by not having to add labor as they grow, they can offer better pricing to their customers. So it’s a win-win for everybody.” — Scooter Sayers, President, Sayers Logistics & LTL Consultancy

“We’ve actually adopted, I think we’ve got it with about 10 or 12 customers now, a digital scorecard. In other words, how well are they doing at integrating with us digitally? Are we getting a bill of lading digitally? If we are, what is the quality of the data that we get?” — Todd Polen, VP of Pricing Services, Old Dominion Freight Line

“I think a great place to start is incentivizing everyone to pull out all of these exceptions, all of this friction, all of the sand in the gears and eliminate this administrative burden for everyone.” — Scooter Sayers, President, Sayers Logistics & LTL Consultancy

Resources:

ODFL.com

Cargo Shorts Podcast

Sayers Logistics