CCJ Innovators profiles carriers and fleets that have found innovative ways to overcome trucking’s challenges. If you know a carrier that has displayed innovation, contact CCJ Chief Editor Jason Cannon at jasoncannon@randallreilly.com or 800-633-5953.
Supply chain snarls happen when goods can't quickly get from beginning to end, but there are numerous baked-in delays often shrugged off as a cost of doing business.
Trailers are typically unloaded piece-by-piece, requiring dozens of trips in and out of the trailer and the touching of various pallets multiple times. Then there's all the manual work inside the trailer, placing load bars and securing pieces of freight, and all of it happens while a driver is waiting and the truck is parked – a process fraught with congested docks, damaged freight and driver dwell time, which increases processing times, customer claims and detention fees.
Just before the pandemic, when supply chain inefficiencies shined brightest, ArcBest (CCJ Top 250, No. 18) kicked off a pilot aiming to improve freight handling, reduce damage and enhance working conditions in its own facilities – a multi-piece suite of hardware and software that modernizes and transforms how freight is loaded, unloaded and transferred, called Vaux.
Vaux enables the contents of a trailer to be unloaded in a handful of seconds and offers total visibility into freight movement within warehouse facilities, on the dock and over the road, creating efficiencies and orchestrating seamless warehouse operation.
The name Vaux, said ArcBest Chief Innovation Officer and President of ArcBest Technologies Michael Newcity, was inspired "by one of nature's most incredible flyers: the Vaux's swift. A swarm of these birds demonstrates an amazing synchronized movement," he said, "and that's exactly what this technology does."
The Vaux Freight Movement System consists of the Vaux MP and MP Coupler, which enables freight handling operators to load and unload full trailers quickly. They connect to warehouse operations through Vaux OS, a suite of proprietary software that includes warehouse orchestration, operator fulfillment and MP Tracker.
