American inventor Thomas Edison said: “There’s a way to do it better – find it.” At XPO, we’re constantly looking for new ways to provide greater value and better service to our customers. Innovation is in our DNA.
 
This commitment to innovation shines through in the proprietary technologies we’ve created to optimize the entire shipment lifecycle for our customers – from pricing, pickup and delivery, to linehaul and dock operations.
 
“We’re creating the first fully dynamic LTL network with real-time intelligence across our entire operations,” says Jay Silberkleit, chief information officer at XPO. “The potential upside of this is enormous in terms of enhancing customer service, improving driving time and increasing cost-savings.”
 
Since becoming a primarily pure-play North American LTL (less-than-truckload) freight transportation provider in November 2022, we’ve made significant advances with three key pieces of technology to further enhance service for our customers:
 
Piece-level tracking (PLT): We completed the rollout of PLT to all 294 service centers across the LTL network this year to give customers greater visibility into the location of their shipments. Traditionally, the LTL industry tracks freight at the shipment level, but with PLT each pallet is given a unique identifier and can be tracked independently. This results in reduced shortages, optimized trailer loading and more efficient labor planning. Since rolling out PLT to all our service centers, we’ve seen a significant reduction in shortages for shipments.
 
Directed loading: To make freight shipping faster and more efficient, we’re currently piloting a new approach called directed loading to take the guesswork out of trailer loading. Freight is assigned to specific trailers so it can be loaded in the most efficient way possible. Directed loading aims to significantly reduce how many times freight is touched, which results in significant cost savings and improved service quality. Directed loading leverages algorithms that identify freight and recommend which trailers to break and how to build bypass trailers and headloads, optimizing the routes freight travels.
 
Edge pickup and delivery (P&D): P&D is the process of picking up a shipment and delivering it to its final destination after it’s been transported through our network. To increase stops per hour and decrease miles per stop, we’ve enhanced our P&D operations by optimizing inbound and outbound delivery route planning through Edge P&D. This technology supports XPO’s planners and dispatchers in creating and monitoring the most efficient city routes.
 
Our company’s history is rooted in technological innovation and disrupting the status quo in freight transportation. With our team of over 400 technologists, we’re rapidly building innovative solutions that optimize and differentiate our business and, most importantly, cultivate a best-in-class shipping experience for our customers.