Expansion to the eModal community portal enables motor carriers and shippers to have requests for appointments filled automatically when containers are available at a Long Beach Container Terminal.
Advent Intermodal Solutions, LLC. has taken another step towards improving supply chain efficiency by expanding its eModal community portal to enable predictive visibility as to exactly when import cargo becomes available for pickup.
In September last year International Transportation Service, Inc. (ITS) announced it would pilot “first-of-its-kind predictive visibility and automated appointments within the eModal.com portal to accelerate landside cargo planning and velocity for shippers, truckers and all port stakeholders”.
Together with Advent, ITS planned to introduce new capabilities to move the planning process beyond notifications of future availability dates and times to “fundamentally change the PreGate and Appointment processes in eModal by enabling the user to indicate their desire to either request an appointment slot or complete a pre-arrival notification automatically, negating the need to return to the portal to make an appointment after an availability message is received,” Advent stated at that time.
The companies have now announced that this feature is available to all ITS motor carriers.
The new functionality eliminates a lot of the website and email trawling motor carriers and shippers currently do as part of their dispatching processes. A user can indicate they want to make an appointment request as soon as a container is available, and that request is made automatically, instead of the user getting a message a container is available and then having to initiate the appointment process manually.
“This first-of-its-kind innovation, live and in operation since 2017 for the ITS terminal in Long Beach, is helping both motor carriers and shippers alike to reduce time checking for container availability and then making a subsequent pickup appointment. The changes in eModal, correlated with changes in the underlying import cargo process for ITS, are already being well received as it helps further streamline the operational planning of cargo flowing through the container supply chain,” Advent stated.
“We can’t thank the folks at ITS, the Harbor Truckers Association (HTA) and their motor carrier/customer steering committee enough. Their input and time spent attending our in training webinars helped ensure this launch moved quickly to full adoption for the 10,000+ truckers in LA/Long Beach in just a few weeks. This is a great example of how further digitizing an already efficient process can get cargo moving faster by eliminating repetitive steps in the landside logistics flow,” said Advent’s Chief Strategy Officer, Allen Thomas.
