Since almost everyone has a smartphone these days, technology has been a growing force in the transportation industry, especially when it comes to paperwork.

A scanning app is a great way to reduce the time spent waiting for truck stop scanners, and they are especially efficient for Bill of Lading’s.
Scanning apps allow drivers to take a picture with a smartphone and send signed BOL’s to their carrier to process, erasing the need for any interaction with the aforementioned truck stop scanner.
There are a variety of different platforms and options, however, making it worth looking into the platform partners and options that are available right now.

Transflo

Transflo, by the Tampa, Fla.-based Pegasus TransTech, is the leading mobile app, and is used by professional drivers across the US and Canada. Transflo’s mobile and cloud-based technologies deliver real-time communications to fleets, brokers, and commercial vehicle drivers, and digitize 500 million shipping documents a year, which represents approximately $84 billion in freight bills. Transflo’s tech solutions can help carriers work more efficiently, reducing costs and improving cash flow. For more information, visit www.transflo.com.

While Transflo’s pricing is a little difficult to come by – the company’s sales team wants to meet, and then customize what package suits you best – in general, they look at what drivers scan and determine the average pages per scan. (For example, a driver may scan a pay sheet, a BOL, a scale ticket, and another page for each load, averaging four pages per load.) They then base their pricing options on the average number of loads per driver per week or month, using that four-page average as a guide.

Transflo may be the most popular scanning app, it is not the only game in town, which brings us to…

Vector

The San Francisco-based Vector has been gaining market share with its automated data capture and algorithms where it creates a silhouette – an orange box over the document – which then allows drivers to take a picture to instantly capture images of many types of documents, also identifying handwritten information, BOL number, document number, and customer ID. This information can be integrated with users’ transportation management systems such as McLoed, Trimble (TMW) as well as other providers. This eliminates the need for manual entry and cuts down on data error as well as efficiency. For more information, visit www.withvector.com

In addition to optical character recognition (OCR), which converts handwritten documents, Vector offers unlimited storage, with images available in either PDF or TIF formatting, depending on your individual needs. Pricing starts at $9 per driver per month, although larger fleets can see costs drop to $8 per driver per month.

Drive Axle

Drive Axle, a Greenville, S.C.-based company and powered by Eleos, is another scanning app option.

Drive Axle’s pricing is tiered, and starts at $19 per month for 100 scanned pages, with additional pages priced at $O.25 each. If your scanning needs are higher, you can pay $39 per month for up to 300 pages (additional pages are again $0.25 each), or you can pay $79 per month for up to 800 pages.

Drive Axle also has a flat rate option of $59 per month with an additional $0.07 per page, which is aimed at larger fleets with a high volume of scanned pages. Billing, however, will fluctuate depending on the scans per month.

TBSDirectory

TBSDirectory, based in Auburndale, Fla., is a new player in the marketplace and offers straightforward, openly-available, pricing. Using the camera technology available via any smartphone or tablet, the scanning app puts easy-to-use tech in the hands of all fleets from large to small.

TBSDirectory’s mission has been to provide solutions for all and to keep pricing fair no matter what size of the trucking company. The company charges a flat rate of $2 per driver per month. TBSDirectory, LLC, is based in Auburndale, Fla. For more information, visit www.tbsdirectory.com