How Do ELD’s Integrate with Freight Visibility?

In regards to the shipping & freight industries, ELD means Electronic Logging Device. ELD’s are used to record a driver’s Record of Duty Status (RoDS) for each of their shipments. To help with the recording of RoDS’s, ELDs replace manual submissions and other operations like hardcopy logbooks and other outdated recording systems that are still in use by some shipping businesses. Electronic Logging Devices allow us to completely automate the RoDS system which removes human error and improves the overall efficiency of the recording process.

Freight Visibility refers to the ability to apply real-time tracking to shipments and other sections of the supply chain. Meaning that at any point, a shipment broker or carrier could look up the status of their shipment and see not only its location, but also an estimated delivery time, if there were any setbacks or delays, a recommended route and more.

It then stands to reason that ELDs play an integral part in freight visibility, as they are what allows the real-time tracking of the shipments to occur. With ELDs, the shipment brokers or carriers that are managing the shipment can set automatic status updates to occur at planned intervals, but it also allows for the data to be accessed immediately so that the shipping managers can get updated information in real-time to help them better run the supply chain process.

Many freight visibility technology providers have integrated ELDs as phone apps. Modern smartphones all have the hardware capability to be electronic logging devices, they just need the software running on the device. Once the app is installed on the driver’s smartphone, it will relay the appropriate data back to the business managers to evaluate.

ELD integration has been revolutionary to the shipping industry, and has saved shipping companies millions of dollars since its inception. By removing the manual process of recording updates, you can get them to be not only much faster, but even more accurate. This provides a huge amount of data to analyze to increase overall industry efficiency, and also save time and money on the individual shipments.

Stephen Roome is a digital marketer and writer from Ontario, Canada.