Convoy – Driving a Greener Future for Freight

Recommendation today: implement an open marketplace that matches a truckload with drivers using real-time routing data to cut inefficiency without adding costs.

Real-world results come from pilots across industries where the same marketplace aligns thousands of miles with optimal lanes, delivering 10–18% fewer empty miles and a measurable drop in fuel burn per mile, explained by an officer on the ground.

The supply chain team notes that brokers gain visibility into capacity, reducing data silos; with shared lane data, the same capacity moves efficiently, thats the reliability edge in practice.

Innovative approaches cut costs while boosting reliability in key industries. As explained by analysts, a leaner network yields a stronger economic signal across markets.

Actionable steps include appointing an officer to oversee alignment with the marketplace in a single region, building a transparent supply dashboard, testing a truckload lane with a 60–90 day window, and tracking metrics such as empty miles, on-time deliveries, and broker engagement.

Convoy’s Greener Freight Initiative: Concrete Actions and Outcomes

Implement a real-time marketplace aligning shipments with available capacity, slashing deadhead across major routes. Use live data to estimate transit times, cost, and resource needs. Enable customer posts, carrier bids, and instant matching, with governance by an officer.

Replace former manual steps with automated checks and create a vice president–led oversight group to coordinate policy, data standards, and supplier onboarding. Centralize data resources, align schedules with labor teams, and integrate facility planning to reduce disruption.

Pilots with 12 fleets achieved measurable gains: fuel use per mile declined, and the overall footprint narrowed. Shipments moved increased capacity utilization, and schedule reliability improved. Estimates indicate customer satisfaction rose while deadhead and empty miles decreased.

Scale plan includes onboarding 20 carrier partners, expanding routes, and upgrading facilities plus sharpening labor training. Expand products catalog in the marketplace and strengthen data resources to improve route suggestions, reduce disruption, and optimize loads.

Monitor world trends to adjust capacity signaling, schedule alignment, and resource allocation. Track metrics such as shipments, footprint, fuel, and deadhead, with updates to the executive officer and vice chair as needed.

How Automated Reloads Cut Empty-Mile Emissions by 45%

Implement automated reloads across core lanes now to align return trips with loaded truckloads, delivering a 45% reduction in empty-mile emissions.

These reloads rely on data from mobile devices and schedule systems that track origin, destination, and timing, helping a shipper account see disruption early to solve the problem in real time.

In california corridors, a typical truckload moves between loaded hubs with backhauls that can be matched within minutes, slashing fuel spend on empty miles and lowering emissions per mile.

Process steps: map chains, identify disruption-prone bottlenecks, deploy automated reload triggers, train crew, and align a schedule that favors loaded rotations.

This approach could provide value to both shipper and carrier networks, with an account of performance across chains; committed teams are essential to keep momentum, reducing spend while shortening the time spent taking empty legs.

Data from 30-day pilots show average empty miles fell 40% during early tests, approaching the 45% target as scale expands.

More data sharing among chains improves schedule reliability.

To accelerate adoption, a fundraiser could seed grants to digitize reload signals, connect mobile apps, and standardize data exchange across chains.

Recommendation: start with California cross-dock pairs, expand to regional corridors, then monitor primary metrics such as idle time, fuel spend, and CO2 intensity; publish progress to united stakeholders.

Bundling Freight: How Consolidation Lowers Carbon Across Shipments

Adopt a centralized consolidation model that bundles loads on shared routes into a single schedule, eliminating deadhead miles, lifting full-load utilization, and ensuring supply meets demand with lower emissions. Begin with a preferred roster of carriers in the marketplace, then accept others as capacity and data justify expansion.

• Impact: data‑driven consolidation lowers carbon intensity per load, nearly eliminating unnecessary travel; cross‑docking and synchronized schedules reduce fuel burn across markets, with CO2 per tonne‑km dropping roughly 10-25% on targeted lanes.
• Supply chain resilience: focusing on a core set of brands that accept consolidated loads keeps the schedule full even during demand spikes, which matter to lives depending on reliable deliveries and service levels; vice versa, routing to others preserves continuity when a partner cannot accept a consolidated load.
• Marketplace economics: consolidating loads creates stronger negotiating leverage in the marketplace, which helps brands accept higher load factors on preferred routes; if capacity shifts, others can pick up the slack, maintaining throughput.
• Data and measurement: track load utilization, schedule adherence, and logistical impacts; metrics that matter include fuel burn, CO2, cost per mile, and on‑time performance.
• Focus on environmental outcomes: bundling reduces wasted capacity across lanes, and full‑load shipments minimize unnecessary stops, which data shows yields meaningful reductions in emissions while preserving service quality.

1. Define focus lanes, set full-load targets, map supply and demand, and establish a schedule window that reduces empty miles.
2. Build a preferred roster of carriers in the marketplace, then accept others as capacity and performance justify expansion.
3. Invest in data‑sharing tools, API connections, and standard load specs to match loads to a consolidated plan, reducing mismatch and enabling precise timing.
4. Pilot the approach on a small set of lanes; monitor load, schedule adherence, and carbon metrics; adjust the plan based on results.
5. Scale gradually, ensuring governance and contracts support vice versa routing when needed, while maintaining focus on full loads, which matter to environmental and economic outcomes.

Digital Freight Transformation: What the Latest Funding Enables for Carriers and Shippers

Begin a 90-day pilot to unite visibility, rate negotiation, and settlement into a single digital workflow, funded through a mix of public grants, private equity, and bezos-backed programs, with an estimated total of approximately $5–7 billion across the sector, to test throughput improvements in key corridors used by trucking networks.

Key beneficiaries include carriers and shippers where digital visibility shifts from static quotes to dynamic planning; this actually reduces supply chain variability, lowers fuel burn, and improves on-time performance, delivering a measurable impact on cost per mile and per order.

Funding arrives from a blend: equity investments, government programs, and brands-led accelerators, plus bezos-linked initiatives. The estimated allocation prioritizes telematics adoption, mobile apps used by operators, and API integrations that shorten the term from quote to payment, while expanding the American footprint in regional hubs. This improves access to capital, reduces costs of modernization, and supports both carriers and shippers with faster onboarding and better load matching across times and routes.

Actionable steps include selecting a core digital platform, running a 60–90-day test, and tying KPIs to the new funding terms, such as on-time delivery rate, fuel per mile, average dwell time, and lane coverage. Ensure mobile interfaces and EDI/API integrations to simplify carrier onboarding and invoice settlement, leveraging both public and private investing to expand coverage in times of peak demand and in pandemic-recovery phases.

Practical Steps to Adopt Convoy’s Green Freight Solutions in Your Fleet