Back Office to Bottom Line: Starting Your AI Journey in Trucking
When people talk about “AI in…
When people talk about “AI in trucking,” they like to jump straight to robots driving trucks down the interstate. While self-driving trucks may be in the future, an immediate revolution is happening in the back office, and it’s not science fiction.
Empowering your team by introducing a digital workforce that supports your business from the inside out is what it’s about. Starting your AI journey isn’t a massive, all-or-nothing project. It’s a step-by-step process focused on tangible results.
Think of it as building a digital workforce co-pilot for your business. Start small. Look at the jobs that are repetitive, boring, and prone to mistakes. Those are the ones AI can take off your plate.
You don’t need to replace your systems as AI enhances what you already use. EBE’s “automation without disruption” approach provides immediate and measurable ROI as you typically don’t have to fully rip and replace your existing systems.
Think of AI like your washing machine or dishwasher. Nobody wakes up excited to scrub plates or wring out socks by hand. That’s why someone invented machines that do it faster, cleaner, and without whining about it.
The same story rings true with a digital workforce. Ask yourself: what’s the one thing your team keeps doing on repeat that still manages to slow up their day? Here are a few common spots:
Financial and Billing Workflows
If your team spends hours keying in invoices, driver pay, or carrier settlements, AI can cut that manual entry by up to 97%. That means faster invoice cycles, fewer errors, and better cash flow.
Document Processing
Invoices, BOLs, rate confirmations. They show up in every shape and format. AI can read them, grab the right data, and upload it straight into your system. That’s hours of typing gone.
Operations
From entering stop information into ELDs to creating load tenders from customer spreadsheets, AI can take over the repetition. Automation takes over so your drivers get clearer instructions and errors are minimized.
Exceptions
Instead of handling every transaction, your digital workforce can process 90% or more of the standard work and flag only the exceptions for review. Your staff can then focus on the higher-value work that actually needs their expertise.
By targeting these specific bottlenecks, you can begin your AI journey with a strategic, focused approach that delivers immediate efficiency gains.
We’re not playing favorites here. Everyone from the driver in the cab to the planner in the office gets a boost. Here’s how each group wins.
Carriers
Automation speeds up settlements, driver pay, and invoicing. It also sends accurate instructions straight to ELDs, helping improve driver efficiency and retention while reducing costly errors.
Shippers
Faster response times and better visibility are key. AI helps with automated load matching and predictive analytics to keep freight moving on time and at lower cost.
Brokers
When transactions pile up, automation steps in. AI handles tasks like load matching, quoting, and data entry so brokers can do more without adding headcount.
EBE’s BeyondAI™ is a prime example of putting a digital workforce into practice. Instead of a complex, timely, and costly overhaul, our solutions integrate with your existing systems like Trimble, McLeod, and others to deliver fast efficiency gains. The core of this lies between two innovations:
AI-Driven Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
This solution extracts key data from documents like invoices, bills of lading, and other carrier paperwork, dramatically reducing manual data entry. Unlike traditional, rule-based OCR that often struggles with poor quality or unstructured documents, machine learning OCR actively learns from every document it processes. This advanced capability reduces your teams’ manual keystrokes by up to 97%.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
This is the digital workforce that takes over high-volume, repetitive tasks. We call ours “Emily.” She never clocks out and doesn’t get tired. Emily can work 100x faster than any human and with greater accuracy. RPA automates everything from driver pay and carrier settlements to updating web portals and invoicing shippers. It also identifies out-of-standard transactions and routes only the exceptions for your team to review, allowing the system to handle around 90% of the transactions.
Fleet Transit reduced freight invoice processing time from six hours to just 45 minutes
Solar Transport cut freight invoicing time from 17 hours to under 10 minutes which is a 65% reduction in billing time
Texas TransEastern reduced daily invoicing time in the KAG portal from four hours to just 45 minutes
The freight industry is always shifting, and the companies that adapt early stay ahead. According to McKinsey & Company, research shows that early adopters of AI-powered supply chain software have 15% lower logistics costs than their competitors. A report from Straits Research projects the global AI in logistics market to grow from $16.95 billion in 2024 to $348 billion by 2032.
Building a stronger business with the support of a digital workforce is the important thing. And you don’t have to do it all at once. Start small. Automate the tasks that give you the biggest lift right away, then build from there.
Want to see what this looks like in real operations? Watch the webinar recording below with EBE and Hogan Services. Ned Kriegshauser lays out how Hogan put a digital workforce in place and what it’s doing for them.
Want to see where AI can make the biggest impact in your operations?
