When coordinating the pickup of a container, particularly at inland rail facilities, a lot of time goes into the process of getting the pickup number and sharing it with the trucker.
These numbers are not public since they are the secret that authorizes the pickup. As a result, they must be communicated by the steamship line to the shipment parties.
However, often the trucker performing the actual pickup is not an authorized party, neither is the broker, so several e-mails are required for each container to obtain the information.
OpenTrack now has the ability to process Arrival Notices and extract the pickup numbers which you can then access in the Dashboard and API.
Processing Arrival Notices
We have the ability to process arrival notices in two different ways, depending on the carrier and your role in the shipment:
Set up forwarding of these documents to our automated inbox, and we'll extract the data from the e-mail attachments
For certain carriers, an LOA will grant us access to the documents via EDI/API and we'll extract the data from these direct messages
Reach out to us at support@opentrack.co to get this set up.
Accessing Pickup Numbers in OpenTrack
Once we have setup the collection of pickup numbers, you can access them in OpenTrack:
In Explore
In the Container Detail View
In the API
Building Reports
Now you can build a process around these pickup numbers.
For example you could configure a report that selects containers arriving in the next two days where the pickup number exists in OpenTrack.
Just configure the filters:
Inland ETA (rail
Has Pickup Number
Then you can save the report, configure e-mail delivery and add any recipients!
Next Steps
We have a lot more plans for this feature and we'd love to discuss them. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback.