3PL Summitt: What does visibility actually mean?

“I think visibility is a bigger conversation. It has to do with everything that goes on with the life of a load. What we talk about with location visibility, we’re talking about carriers’ performance. There are many other things that determine the performance of a carrier that have nothing to do with where that dot is. If you go upstream of the problem and solve the trust issue, ‘Are you going to deliver my load on time?’ is a trust issue.”

“When we think about visibility, if everything is important, nothing is important. I think when we talk about creating a trusted environment between carriers, partners and 3PLs, we’re not saying that nothing is going to go wrong. We’re saying that we trust that we will manage the  exceptions.”

“Can you tell, not based on the truck or what the carrier told, but having a global understanding of that carrier, are they even in range of the shipment? Not based on what the carrier told you, but can you get a view to the carrier on a single load of whether they’re even physically capable of moving that shipment? Can you tell if that carrier is overbooked, how much capacity do they have? How much are they committed to? Can you tell if the truck is insured? If something happens during the life of that load, that has nothing to do with location but has everything to do with theft or fraud.”