Linehaul Transportation: The Complete Guide for 2024 [Expert Analysis]

Ever wondered how your customer receives their online order within a promised time frame?

What’s the driving force behind these hiccup-free deliveries? You guessed it right, it’s shipping logistics!

This stat is a testimony to how invaluable the logistics industry is in today’s era of global commerce.

A key component that often goes unnoticed but plays a pivotal role in the success of logistics is line haul transportation. It is the magic wand that weaves the threads of a supply chain to ensure seamless movement of goods over substantial distances.

If you are a business owner looking to serve customers beyond borders, this blog is for you.

It explores the facets of line haul transportation, including benefits, influence areas, and optimization tips. Let’s continue to understand this:

What is Line Haul Transportation?

Line haul transportation is the movement of varied goods across multiple distribution facilities, transport hubs, or warehouses. These goods can be raw materials, components, or finished products transported using channels, including rail, road, sea, or air.  

Further, while routes may typically be the same, freight may vary in size and volume, ranging from small documents to heavy pallets.

Put simply, line haul logistics refers to moving freight from one location to another through different modes of transportation.

Some key characteristics of line haul services are:

• Longer distances, usually about 250 kilometers
• Scheduled transit and delivery times
• Dedicated equipment and technology
• Live freight tracking and analytics

What is a Line Haul Carrier?

A line haul carrier is a specialized service provider that transports freight over long distances, often beyond national or international boundaries. As carriers are crucial to line haul logistics, selecting them wisely is essential.

Ideally, you should select line haul carriers that must:

• Have a proven track record in managing time-sensitive goods
• Ensure 100% SLA compliance
• Be highly aware of country-specific regulations
• Exhibit experience managing partial and full truckloads

5 Key Aspects of Logistics Line Haul Transportation Affects

Line haul carriers influence the shipping process in various ways. If the carrier is efficient, haul transportation can become economical and punctual. It can also boost the customer’s trust in the carrier. Here are the aspects that a line haul carrier influences:

1. Delivery duration

A carrier’s effectiveness and tracking affect a delivery’s duration. For instance, notifying a recipient with an estimated arrival time can help prepare them to unload the freight once it arrives, reducing delivery time.

2. Transportation costs

As carriers track each delivery’s analytics, it can help them determine the suitable cost of moving freight while maintaining profits. Thus, they directly impact the line haul charges applicable for goods transported from one depot to another. 

3. Freight movement

Line haul carriers control the modes of transportation and can switch from one mode to another as required. For example, a carrier with a big fleet of cargo ships can influence a significant portion of freight shipping logistics across a specific water body. So, it can control competition, manage shipping costs, and customize delivery timeframes.

4. Depots movement

Line haul carriers move packages to and from depots, giving them greater autonomy on shipping schedules. Depots create a safe and secure storage environment to store manufactured or finished products until they are shipped. 

5. Shipping to and from sorting facilities 

A line haul carrier transports consignments to and from sorting facilities. Here, companies sort raw materials and goods into groups for specific uses. For instance, a retail manufacturer might prefer further sorting and categorization of thousands of retail items at a sorting facility. It may then ship particular ones to storage depots for future use.

9 Benefits of Line Haul Services for Businesses

Line haul transportation provides the following advantages that can transform shipping operations significantly.

1. Quicker deliveries 

Line haul transportation involves moving the freight directly between hubs, distribution centers, or cities. Direct routes reduce unwanted stops and detours, ensuring rapid transits compared to conventional transportation modes with multiple intermediary points. 

2. Cost efficiency

Line haul logistics facilitate the consolidation of small consignments into a single large shipment to increase the goods carried per trip. This bulk transportation of large volumes of packages helps decrease the shipping costs per mile and unit to boost cost efficiency.

3. Better customer experience

Line haul services rely on fixed routes with minimal stops to ensure consistent transit times and on-time deliveries. This reliability and punctuality of line haul trucking help customers plan or optimize inventory based on expected arrival times, elevating their satisfaction. Moreover, keeping your customers updated and notified with real-time updates boosts the overall customer experience. 

4. Enhanced security

Line haul trucking operations depend on fewer stops and sealed containers, minimizing the odds of theft or damage to consignments. Besides, tracking line haul carriers provides complete visibility and control over shipping services, reinforcing security.

5. Fewer accidents or mishaps

Line haul drivers work shifts that last eight or nine hours, typically during morning hours. It helps keep them active and alert. It also prevents fatigue or loss of focus and accidents that could result from it. 

6. Flexibility and scalability

Line haul transportation is often designed to scale up or down in line with varying shipment volumes based on demand changes. Moreover, it can seamlessly integrate with different transportation modes, including rail, air, or sea, to facilitate flexible intermodal logistics.

7. Effortless customization to accommodate special requirements

Industries like food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, or chemicals may demand special temperature conditions to maintain product quality and integrity. Line haul carrier services can be customized to provide the infrastructure and equipment to meet these specifications and ensure safe delivery. 

8. Flexible route optimization 

Line haul trucking allows for customizing and optimizing routes based on traffic patterns, road situations, and clients’ locations. Creating optimal route(s) for carrier trucks is integral to reducing transportation times and improving operational efficiency.

9. Energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact

Line haul operations entail planning and traveling the shortest distances between locations, lowering fuel costs and energy consumption. Besides, line haul carriers invest in fuel-efficient technologies like low-rolling-resistance tires and trailer skirts, minimizing environmental impact.

Understanding Line Haul Carrier Tracking

An integral component to ensuring robust line haul services is Line Haul CarrierTracking. It refers to the ability to trace a shipment’s location and status during its journey.  

It encompasses deploying digital tools and technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

Significance of Tracking Line Haul Carriers

Line haul carrier tracking is a key component of modern-day logistics. Tracking line haul carriers plays a vital role in supply chain management as it provides real-time information on freight movement. It is also indispensable to efficient, reliable, and customer-centric transportation services. 

Below are the prominent benefits it provides:

1. Enhanced SLA management

Line haul carrier tracking provides real-time visibility and performance metrics to evaluate the progress of shipments. These insights help assess whether carriers are meeting SLA commitments and evaluate areas of improvement through analytics and reports. 

2. Proactive issue resolution

As carriers play a significant role in long-distance transportation, tracking them helps view their progress, identify issues, and take immediate corrective measures. For instance, if one of the long-distance trailers faces a mechanical issue, the tracking system can notify the maintenance personnel. It can facilitate a prompt resolution and prevent delays.

3. Dynamic rerouting and scheduling 

Tracking helps haul transportation companies consider factors such as changes in weather, traffic, or demand fluctuations. Accordingly, they can make appropriate readjustments to freight routes and delivery schedules to minimize the impact on services. 

4. Compliance with geography-specific regulations

Live haul tracking helps make sure carrier vehicles traverse the routes and roads compliant with region-specific laws and regulations. It helps prevent penalties that may ensue from violating laws regarding speed limits, transportation of hazardous materials, or weight limits. 

Line Haul Optimization: What Is It and How to Achieve It?

Line haul optimization is the process of planning and optimizing routes, schedules, and resources to maximize hauling efficiency.

Trucks travel long routes to collect freight from multiple hubs and transport them to the final destination. Therefore, optimizing their journey is imperative to minimize delivery time, fuel, and driving hours. It also helps improve stakeholders’ experience through refined logistics services.     

Given below are a few proven line haul optimization practices.

1. Optimize routes to transport freight

Determining optimal delivery routes on land, air, or sea contributes to ensuring on-time freight delivery. Moreover, it paves the way to minimize fuel consumption and overhead costs while boosting profitability per trip. How would you optimize routes when it comes to delivering on time? Upper is the best choice when it comes to planning and optimizing routes for your daily delivery chaos.

2. Track and optimize drivers’ performance

Drivers form the backbone of a transportation company. Therefore, keeping track of their performance is essential. For that, you should analyze the total stops assigned to a drive and the ones they missed.

You can also find the actual time taken to complete a delivery against the initial estimate. It helps you determine the percentage of deviation and investigate the reason behind it. Based on these insights, you can redistribute stops, shuffle drivers, or add more drivers to boost delivery efficiency. When it comes to tracking your drivers, Upper allows you to get real-time visibility of your drivers about their current location, total complete deliveries, ongoing, and more.

3. Keep customers in the loop

Clear and transparent communication with customers is key to engaging high-quality logistics services. Therefore, you should inform them of details, such as the location, estimated time of arrival, or delay associated with freight. It will help strengthen customer relations and promote an efficient supply chain.

4. Implement the right software

Using digital driver tracking software can help gain real-time visibility into each delivery and its analytics. It enables you to understand potential issues and areas of improvement, take necessary measures to address them and optimize freight shipping. Not only this, implementing route optimization software will also do wonders for your business, helping you in many ways like planning & optimizing routes, tracking, updating, and more.

Stay on Top of Your Line Haul Transportation with Upper

Line haul transportation is a game-changer for businesses looking to transport large freight volumes across distant locations. Tracking carriers and optimizing routes to transport your packages is the key to making your line haul shipping services robust, trusted, and profitable. 

Besides, you should be able to readjust routes and sequences of stops based on priority changes, convey accurate ETAs to customers, and collect electronic proof of delivery. All these steps will pave the way to refined line haul services and increased customer satisfaction, making the use of proof of delivery software essential for efficient operations.

Upper’s route planner can help make managing your line haul services hassle-free and transform your shipping efficiency.So, wait no more and sign up for Upper’s 7 days free trial and transform your shipping efficiency.