Blog

While using DrayNow is a great way to get capacity, the benefits don’t stop there. Powered by technology, the entire lifecycle of an intermodal load lives on our platform. From the time a trip is put up on the marketplace and until the container is brought back to the rail, brokers have clear visibility at their disposal. Data points are also picked up and recorded whenever action is taken by the carrier, the DrayNow team, or the broker. It’s important to keep up that transparency so that everything is accounted for and nothing is left behind.

Our technology drives efficiency for intermodal freight, and that starts before the load even shows up on the marketplace. When adding an order, all the broker needs to do is provide the trip details, pricing and location, and the platform creates the entire trip in a format easy to understand for carriers. There’s no need to provide mileage or even the address of the rail yards. Those pieces of data will populate on their own as all of the trip details come together.

DrayNow is also the technology solution for getting real-time visibility on each load. Not only can a broker go to their customer with updates regarding when the carrier arrived at a location, but they can also update them on each step of the trip when new information and documents come in. All of the updates are derived from the platform and the carrier’s app, so at no point does a broker have to personally reach out to the carrier for information.

As the load moves with the carrier to its next destination, it’s moving on the DrayNow platform as well! While the carrier is en route to the shipper, consignee, or rail yard, the live tracking map updates their location every 15 seconds. Not only is there tracking, but an estimated time of arrival (ETA) is also given for when the carrier will reach their next destination of the trip, based on how the trip is currently going.

On top of trip updates, documents are added each step of the way, as opposed to the traditional model of repeatedly reaching out to carriers after they’ve completed a trip. Carriers scan and upload the BOLs, PODs and rail billing right from their phones, cutting down tremendously on the time it would usually take to gather all of that together. And since they’re stored right on the DrayNow platform, it’s all in one centralized place, as opposed to docs scattered all over the broker’s email, fax, or even regular mail.

As a broker, once you have the freight in your hands, it shouldn’t be difficult to execute it, and then spend too much time looking for paperwork. With DrayNow, from start to finish, you can follow the entire lifecycle of your intermodal trip in real-time and properly see it through to completion.