Better Service, Lower Cost—The LTL Electronic Bill of Lading

Anyone who has shipped freight knows paperwork continues to play a big role in the LTL shipping process. The bill of lading (BOL) carries significant importance to all parties in the supply chain—shipper, consignee, carrier, and 3PL. It contains the shipment’s origin and destination addresses, freight details, services requested by the freight owner, and other critical identifiers such as hazardous materials.

In short, the bill of lading contains information the carrier needs to transport the goods in a timely and safe manner.

Completed bill of lading details live within the carrier’s freight management systems. When a shipment is tendered using a paper bill of lading, the details are manually entered, inviting errors. These errors can mean lost time and potential added costs. This leads to delivery delays and a higher risk of damage due to additional freight handling.

Billing accuracy and invoice errors also occur due to challenges matching accounts to pricing agreements or freight reweighs and reclassification due to commodity description and classification transcription errors. It’s frustrating when a freight invoice doesn’t match the original paper bill of lading, and it can lead to disputes and payment delays.

Fewer Invoice Errors

Electronically transmitting the information on the bill of lading from the shipper’s transportation management system (TMS) directly to the carrier’s management system dramatically reduces the potential for human error. Digitizing the bill of lading leads to fewer classification and invoice issues down the road. This digitization adds up to a better customer experience and accurate billing. Pre-programmed eBOLs require specific information such as density, classification, and dimensional specifications.

Improved Service Performance

In addition to ensuring correct address information, there are several other ways early visibility to the complete, accurate freight characteristics assist with carrier service performance.

For example, communicating the freight characteristics to the carrier digitally enables the carrier to ensure they have the proper equipment and capacity to complete the pickup the first time. Additionally, the carrier can begin planning the linehaul routing when they have visibility to the freight characteristics before the freight hits the origin dock.

Cost Savings for Shippers and Carriers

The Digital LTL Council published an article recently that states shippers can expect to see an average of 2-4% cost savings per shipment once widespread adoption of eBOL occurs. These savings will come from greater network efficiency and on-time performance, improved carrier performance, decreased dwell times, reduced safety stock levels, and better worker efficiency.

Industry-wide, this could potentially add up to $470 million in savings. eBOLs will provide information more quickly to carriers, allowing them to plan operations in advance and optimize networks. Lower costs to serve will benefit all stakeholders across the LTL industry.

It’s Time to Adopt a Digital Bill of Lading

Getting to this point—where electronic bills of lading have progressed from a promising concept to a full reality—required collaboration among all LTL transportation ecosystem stakeholders. The Digital LTL Council was the launching pad from which carriers, logistics service providers, shippers, and technology providers initiated a set of uniform standards to guide scalable automation and digitization of LTL shipments.

If you are ready to learn more about how SMC³ LTL APIs can partner with you to achieve eBOL adoption and automate your entire shipment lifecycle, visit: www.smc3.com/ltl-api.