When it comes to the final mile, shipping businesses at scale have a low tolerance for inefficiency.
Traditionally, final-mile business processes have been scattered across multiple programs — one for load matching, another for interacting with customers and another for billing, to name a few. The fragmented nature of the industry has always required shippers to work with many regional carriers or owner-operators, all of which have their own procedures and technology limitations. Shippers end up spending valuable time on searching through paperwork, manual data entry and unending phone calls and emails as they try to wrangle the many moving parts of the shipping process.
This way of working may allow a business to tread water, but it won’t last forever. When demand inevitably increases, the reality of just how time-consuming and chaotic these processes are starts to become apparent. Sourcing capacity and coordinating with carriers while navigating disjointed workflows ultimately leads to lost time and opportunities.
“When freight volumes rise, many shippers don’t want to concede control over their logistics operations, causing them to react slowly, which in turn creates volume overflows with no way to catch up because they lack carrier capacity,” said Connor Chambers, senior director of integrated partnerships at Mothership.
Mothership offers a solution to help shippers not only keep their heads above water but to optimize their efficiencies like never before. Through its seamless suite of connected technologies, Mothership consolidates all the steps of the shipping process into one place.
The complete suite of essential tools for shipping, including load matching, real-time tracking and billing, are at shippers’ fingertips on Mothership’s all-in-one dashboard. Its combined ease of access and automation allows shippers to move more loads quicker and provide unmatched final-mile reliability in 37 metros.
Mothership has centralized a nationwide network of 26-foot box trucks, mainly comprised of owner-operators, allowing shippers to quickly scale and respond to demand fluctuations. Companies can book up to 200 shipments in just 30 seconds, optimize their routing in a minute, get matched with nearby carriers in 15 minutes and deliver the same day.
“With Mothership, shippers never have to concede control because they have access to complete visibility of their freight with our up-to-the-second real-time tracking, centralized billing and the ability to instantly unlock the economies of scale with optimally routed carriers needed to deliver freight same day,” Chambers said.
If a company already has a centralized technology platform, its software may not be compatible with its carrier partners. This means phone calls and emails are still being used to relay important load updates. Mothership removes this barrier because its shippers and carriers use mutual technology. This enables seamless communication and real-time tracking visibility between parties throughout the shipping process, all within the same program, taking shippers’ efficiency and reliability to the next level.
“Mothership turns a multiday process filled with phone call updates, endless emails and countless issues into one-click shipping, with always available online tracking and automated pickup and drop-off flows right on the carrier’s cellphone,” Andrew Cunningham, VP of product at Mothership, explained.
Shippers needing same-day delivery or milk-run style multiple shipments can allow consignees to select a delivery window that works best for them. This, paired with its automated routing feature, brings customer satisfaction and optimization to an intersection.
Established companies can integrate Mothership’s API into their current processes right away, allowing them to quickly move high-volume shipments.
Mothership easily links into a business’ TMS, enterprise resource planning system or checkout experience with its API. This allows shippers to experience instant data transfer, real-time visibility and more access to reliable capacity than ever without leaving their platform.
“Shippers are leveraging Mothership to complete last-mile pickups directly in the TMS that they are already using. They don’t have to change their tools or processes, all they have to do is use an out-of-the-box TMS integration or complete an integration with Mothership’s API and start shipping,” Cunningham said.
Its powerful API allows access to Mothership quoting, tendering, real-time tracking and document transfers. Shippers can access their prenegotiated rates and tap into the live carrier network right away.
Mothership plans on rolling out more prebuilt API connections with TMS providers, with two already live, including Banyan Technology’s LIVE Connect platform.
“Banyan’s connection to Mothership’s API expands an already robust freight management system to include rating and execution for all OTR modes,” says Banyan Technology CEO, Brian Smith. “Our clients can now rate and execute first/final mile shipments alongside, LTL, truckload and parcel modes from a single screen.”
To learn more about Mothership’s centralized tech stack and API integrations, click here.