The vehicle shipping industry is currently facing multiple challenges that hinder its efficiency and effectiveness. Traditional approaches depend on a fragmented marketplace and mostly manual processes, which are prone to errors and delays. These inefficiencies lead to underutilized transport trucks, resulting in higher operational costs and longer delivery times.
RunBuggy has implemented advanced AI technologies to tackle these challenges head-on. By leveraging AI, RunBuggy automates order grouping and has released a streamlined user interface on desktop and mobile, so haulers can self-discover order groups that will give them a full truck load. This approach complements our existing order recommendation AI, which matches haulers with orders based on a variety of factors. These factors include historical orders, order views, future/current locations, truck capabilities, and app usage behaviors.
Going forward, our grouping AI will be used to inform pricing so that we can pay more for difficult/single order moves and accelerate the claiming of groups along common routes. Transport companies can make more money, faster—while the RunBuggy marketplace runs more efficiently.
Challenges Today
Finding full loads can be a time-consuming process today. Many haulers depend on multiple sources or websites to find loads. Even with a large and growing marketplace like RunBuggy, many order details are initially hidden for security purposes. This means a lot of clicking, searching, and waiting until enough orders are available to fill a truck on your favorite routes. Moreover, this process gets messy because you need to keep track of multiple orders with different addresses and pickup/drop-off restrictions. This logistical mess means that orders sit idle and regularly get unclaimed due to misaligned expectations and missed order details. As a result, trucks are more likely to ship with empty spots or require empty backhauls due to the challenges of finding good, available orders.
RunBuggy’s Advanced AI Order Grouping
Our advanced grouping algorithms remove the need for searching and clicking through orders to find a full load. Now, a typical flow for a hauler searching for loads would look like…
- User logs into the RunBuggy marketplace—via desktop or mobile—and heads to the Recommended Orders page, where loads are ranked based on the transporter’s unique preferences, location, and haul history.
- User clicks on an order and will often see ‘suggested groups’, which are curated and ranked to give haulers the most complementary orders possible. Many orders have “same pickup and drop-off” locations while others might have groups that are “on route” and/or on the “backhaul”. User clicks and assigns drivers from that same page.
- Haulers can now focus on hitting the road and getting paid quickly!
Haul Smarter, Not Harder
This streamlined and simple process allows haulers to focus on what type of loads are needed at any given time. For example, their recommended orders might show open trailer orders because that is their typical workload. The grouping AI will work to curate groups of other open trailer orders that will work well together (enclosed or non-operational orders will be omitted). We ensure that orders are on the same/very similar route using a proprietary geospatial AI model.
If a hauler moves from repo yards, for example, each order will list all available orders from the same repo yards and to the same auctions. A hauler can also easily select from operational and non-operational vehicles. This process gets orders on trucks more quickly, and in turn, reduces overhead from operational teams to source available orders and follow up with haulers that might be sitting on claimed orders.
Another use case for the grouping AI is “load completion”. In other words, if a hauler has claimed a few orders on a route and a new, similar order hits the marketplace, we will send that order to the claimed hauler right away. Our AI system will notify the hauler via text/email/in app notification (based on user preferences) and add any other suggested groups. This load completion feature gets orders moved right away and eliminates the need for a hauler to do any searching at all.
RunBuggy’s AI is Always Improving
One of the most important parts of an AI system are the teams focusing on analysis and improvements of algorithms. The grouping AI creates a stream of data around what groups are available, what groups are viewed, what groups are claimed, etc. These data points allow our team to adapt the algorithms so the quality of groups can improve.
Furthermore, the grouping AI allows us to create a fairer and more equitable marketplace. Some orders are more difficult and have to be moved as singles rather than groups. However, most pricing algorithms cannot handle this well in many circumstances. The next generations of our AI will be able to understand these contexts and get transporters the money they deserve. When interests are aligned, marketplaces work more efficiently and that means vehicles move quickly and haulers are paid for the hard work they do and with less operational overhead.
Ready to experience the power of our AI order grouping and start hauling smarter?
