By Aaron Huff - reposted from CCJ Magazine - http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=66461

Strip-mining the Web for loads
Any eBay user knows the frustration of losing a bid in the final seconds. Today, savvy eBay enthusiasts use automated bidding tools such as EZ Sniper (www.ezsniper.com) that give the competition no time to respond to their closing bids. They also can keep their knowledge of the value of items private.

With freight slow, many carriers also are scavenging the Web for spot loads. Until recently, this wasn’t too difficult, as there were but a handful of significant load boards. But according to the research firm ARC, most large shippers have built, or are in the processes of building, Web portals for carriers to login and view, bid on and accept loads. Shippers also are requiring carriers to enter these Web portals regularly to update the delivery status of loads.

For years, carriers have used software that automates these routine load transactions with shippers via electronic data interchange. The market is changing, however. EDI is still the standard, but its use is becoming more limited as shippers seek ways to reduce costs.

As a result, many carriers that use EDI now are visiting one or more shipper websites manually throughout the day to find loads to transport on their equipment, or to broker out to other carriers.

“One of our EDI customers posts loads on a website, and these loads are available for low bidding,” says Kenny Cornett, vice president of operations for D&D Sexton Inc., a refrigerated truckload carrier based in Carthage, Mo. “All other loads are EDI offer, a phone call or e-mail offer when we are not primary or secondary on a lane.”

Naturally, the number of websites monitored by carriers will increase according to the size of their operations. The impact is more administrative costs – and more room for human error.

“The problem right now is that carriers have people sitting in front of a machine, hitting the refresh button looking for new loads,” says David McCarty, marketing director of Intelek Technologies. “It is very human- and time-intensive.”

So Intelek (www.intelek-tech.com) soon will release a new load automation tool called StripMiner. The software was developed to gather loads continuously from multiple trading partner websites.