Can a Trucking or Logistics Company Sell or License Its Data to AI?
AITrainingDataBroker.com
Trucking or logistics?
Your loads
are worth money
Why the bad days on your loads are what AI companies want, and what never leaves your yard.
Jimmy Lin
Trucking or logistics? Your loads are worth money
Hello, everyone. Picture this: it is 6 in the morning, and your driver pulls up to the dock right on time, only to hear that the load is not ready and to come back at noon.
So your dispatcher gets on the phone. The next stop has to move, and the customer wants to know what is going on.
Every one of those calls and emails leaves a record behind. And right now, AI companies are paying for records like that, because a messy day is exactly the part AI still gets wrong.
How often does a day like that happen? More often than you might think.
The video
Full script
Hello, everyone. Picture this: it is 6 in the morning, and your driver pulls up to the dock right on time, only to hear that the load is not ready and to come back at noon.
So your dispatcher gets on the phone. The next stop has to move, and the customer wants to know what is going on.
Every one of those calls and emails leaves a record behind. And right now, AI companies are paying for records like that, because a messy day is exactly the part AI still gets wrong.
How often does a day like that happen? More often than you might think.
To find out, ATRI, a trucking research group, asked almost 600 truck drivers. It found that in 2023, drivers were held up at 39.3% of their stops. Between direct costs and lost time, that cost the industry about $15 billion.
In other words, waiting is not the odd day. It is a normal day, and your team deals with it through calls, emails and notes, load after load.
Those notes are what this video is about. But first, who am I to talk about your loads?
I'm Jimmy. I have worked in data at Fortune 500 companies, as a data analyst, a data engineer and a software engineer, and I am trained in data science. I am also a Canadian military veteran, where I specialized in data analysis and reporting.
Are you selling your data? We are your broker and technical advisor. We get you the best price, and we guide your team through the technical side, so your data stays private.
Are you buying data for an AI lab? We find the right data for you and see it through to delivery, so you can focus on advancing AI research.
So, let us start with what AI can already do. Some freight companies now use it to read a load tender, send back a quote and accept the load, all in seconds.
That works well for the easy load. But when BCG surveyed more than 180 logistics companies this year, only about 1 in 10 had made AI work across its core operations.
Why so few? Because real freight is not easy. Trucks break down, docks run late, and pallets go missing.
That is why AI still has to learn the bad day, and your company has already handled thousands of them. Let me walk you through one.
Follow a single load through one day. At 6 am, the shipper is not ready, and by 9:30 your dispatcher has moved the next stop and let the customer know.
At 1:15, the reefer alarm goes off, so the driver checks the unit while dispatch writes it all down. Late in the day, the customer agrees to a new delivery time.
Then, the next morning, the load arrives 2 pallets short, and a claim starts.
Every step along the way left a record of who called, what they decided, and how it ended. That is the kind of work AI companies want to learn from. So what would a buyer actually see?
Take a normal dispatch note. In it, Mike says Pine Valley Foods in Fresno is not ready yet, and the note also has the gate code and the rate.
Before you license anything, we de-identify your data, which means we strip out the driver's name, the customer's name, the gate code and the rate. Mike becomes Driver 9 in every note, and Pine Valley Foods becomes Customer 31, so a buyer can still follow the story.
What the buyer gets is the decision itself: wait, update the customer, and ask for detention after 2 hours.
We write all of this into the contract before you license your data: what we strip out, and how it is checked. And because it is a license, you keep your data and keep using it as you always have. On top of that, some of your data is never shared at all.
The first is anything about your drivers as people, like their files, licenses, medical cards and drug test results. Federal rules keep those test results private, so none of it is ever shared.
The same goes for in-cab video that shows faces, because that kind of data carries real risk. For example, BNSF, the big rail company, agreed to pay $75 million over truck drivers' fingerprints that were scanned at its gates.
We also never share anything that could help a thief: gate codes, pickup numbers, and where a loaded truck is right now.
And finally, we never share a rate that a customer contract keeps private, which brings us to your contracts.
Before you license anything, there are 3 contracts worth a look. The first is with your ELD and TMS vendor, because it says who can export the data and who can reuse it.
The second is your shipper agreements, since many of them keep rates and customer names private.
And if you also broker freight, the third is your broker-carrier agreements.
If one of those contracts bans sharing a type of data, like your shippers' rates, we leave that data out of the license. But that does not end the deal, because your dispatch notes and your claims can often still be licensed. So which records can you license?
It starts with your load history in your TMS, along with the dispatch notes and check calls behind each load.
After that come the exception emails and your OS&D claims, which means over, short and damaged. And if you broker freight, you can add your carrier checks and the fraud attempts you caught.
Your playbook counts too: what your team does at 2 am when a truck breaks down.
What makes all of this worth more is years of it, along with a clear note on how each problem ended. On your side, the main job is exporting the data, and we guide your team through it.
You already know what a good freight broker does: they find the load, get a fair rate, and keep the paperwork straight. I do that same job for data, as your broker and technical advisor.
As your broker, I bring your records to several buyers, so you get competing offers. Then I work through the terms with you, and you make the final call.
As your technical advisor, I guide your team through the technical side, from what to export and in what format, to how your data is de-identified and how it is delivered.
Nothing moves until your team signs off, and the terms are worked out case by case. As for me, I get paid when a deal closes, much like you get paid when a load delivers.
So, can a trucking or logistics company license its data? Yes, it can. Leave out your driver files and gate codes, check your contracts first, and then license the work itself: the loads, the problems, and how your team solved them.
If you run a company with 30 or more people, the records you already have could become a new revenue stream. You can find out if yours qualifies, for free, at AITrainingDataBroker.com.
Thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next one.
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