Your dispatch, carriers, and terminals — unified through AI
Ops managers and dispatchers juggle siloed systems across truck, ocean, and rail every day. These are their stories.
The dock that wasn't ready
Allen Briggs is a company flatbed driver out of Memphis. He goes on duty at 6 AM with a tight but doable plan: live load in Jackson, MS at 10, delivery in Hattiesburg at 2, empty by 4, then 190 miles to Meridian for a 5 PM pickup. From Meridian, he runs the load to Birmingham — home by midnight, hours intact.
He backs into the dock at 10:02. The dock isn't ready. Production ran behind. Nobody called.
Allen sits. At 11 he texts dispatch. At 11:45 he walks to the shipping office — "should be another hour." At 12:45 they finally start loading. Two hours and forty-five minutes of detention.
He makes the Hattiesburg delivery, but now the math doesn't work. Meridian pickup at 5 PM, then 160 miles to Birmingham. He's been on duty since 6 AM. He'll run out of hours 60 miles short of Birmingham. The Meridian pickup gets missed. That's a $350 missed appointment fee, deducted from the carrier settlement.
This isn't rare. According to ATRI, 135 million hours were lost to dock detention in 2023. Four in ten deliveries are affected. The industry absorbs $15 billion a year in dock wait costs.
With an AI assistant connected through an Agentic Control Plane, the system monitors Allen's dock check-in time against his dispatch plan. At 90 minutes of detention — before it cascades — it flags the ops manager with options: reassign the Meridian pickup to Ray Torres (available, 45 miles out), push Birmingham to tomorrow, or let Allen roll the load. Every option shows the cost, the HOS math, and the downstream impact. The ops manager makes the call in two minutes, not two hours.
The container that vanished
Nina Reyes is a logistics coordinator at a Tier 1 automotive supplier. She's tracking container MSCU-4417260 — 2,400 brake calipers from Ningbo, aboard the MSC Aurelia. ETA: March 11, Port of Long Beach. She's confirmed a drayage truck, updated the Denso delivery tracker, and told the plant the parts will be there Wednesday.
Tuesday morning: the drayage driver is at Long Beach. The container isn't there. The vessel was diverted to Oakland three days ago — port congestion. No alert from the carrier. No notification from the port. Nobody told Nina.
The drayage truck dead-headed for $600. Now she needs to rebook Oakland drayage with 48 hours lead time. Demurrage will start ticking at $195 per day once the container is unloaded. And Denso's assembly line needs those parts by Friday or it's $45,000 per hour of downtime.
With an AI assistant on the control plane, the system monitors vessel AIS data, port terminal schedules, and the production calendar together. When the MSC Aurelia bypasses the Long Beach pilot station, the assistant flags immediately — not three days later. Options: rebook Oakland drayage ($850, makes Thursday delivery), file a demurrage extension with MSC (48-hour window, 60% approval rate), or air-freight 600 units ($4,200, guarantees Friday line). Nina doesn't discover the problem from her drayage driver. She solves it before it lands.
The grain that sat in KC
Travis Calhoun manages grain logistics for a Kansas co-op. He's moving 110 carloads of hard red winter wheat to the Galveston export terminal. The vessel MV Bright Horizon's laycan opens March 18. BNSF picked up the cars March 5. Should arrive March 14 — four-day cushion. Comfortable.
March 10: Travis checks the railcar tracking system. Eighty-seven of his 110 cars are sitting in Argentine Yard in Kansas City. Forty-eight hours of dwell time. No exception code. No explanation.
He calls BNSF customer service. Crew shortage, they say. No updated ETA. Can't prioritize individual shipments. The UP interchange at Armourdale has a 36-hour queue. The Galveston terminal needs 72 hours to receive. The laycan window is five days away and closing.
If those cars miss the window, it's $15,000 per day in vessel demurrage. Worse — his buyer in Lagos starts looking at Australian wheat. That's not a fee. That's a lost relationship.
With the control plane monitoring railcar dwell time, the problem is flagged at 24 hours — not discovered at 48. The assistant calculates the terminal's receive window backward from the laycan and shows it's already tight. Options: BNSF expedited handling ($2,800 surcharge, 80% confidence), reroute 30 cars via UP Armourdale (still makes the window), or truck-transload 15 cars as insurance ($52,500). Travis has the trade-offs in front of him while there's still time to act.
Now try it yourself
You're Mike the ops manager. Ask about shipment status across truck, ocean, and rail. Check detention fees, explore options for Allen's HOS problem, or track the railcars stuck in KC. Switch to Lisa the dispatcher to see how role and permissions change.
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