Every distributor has had the frustrating experience of preparing a load for pickup only to discover that the driver isn’t showing up. This has consequences for the entire operation, as resources weren’t just dedicated to getting the freight ready — there is often another truck arriving to take a different load, which will have to be delayed. This has a ripple effect that can be extremely costly for distributors, and it exasperates the carriers that arrive on time.  

This is a clear example of why real-time supply chain visibility is so critical for distributors. When distributors know where deliveries are and when they can be expected to show up, they’re able to minimize disruptions and maintain healthy relationships with other supply chain partners. There is no reason distributors should have to play a guessing game every time they’re expecting a shipment or pickup — existing ELDs and TMS platforms are capable of providing precise, up-to-the-minute information on distance, speed and estimated time of arrival.  

Real-time visibility enables flexibility. The most successful distributors understand how to adapt to rapidly shifting circumstances to minimize waste and maximize efficiency. Warehouses, retailers and other distributors lose a huge amount of value every year due to poor logistics and a lack of coordination with transportation companies. This status quo must change, and there are already powerful tools to facilitate communication and increase visibility. 

Why Visibility is Essential for Distributors

Over the past several years, distributors confronted unprecedented supply chain volatility. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the urgent need for much greater resilience and adaptability across supply chains. During the pandemic, 87% of supply chain professionals said they planned to invest in resilience, while 89% wanted to make their supply chains more agile. Visibility is a key aspect of both resilience and agility, as it ensures that decision-makers have the information they need to prevent and mitigate disruptions.  

For distributors, poor communication and disconnected logistics management systems are major obstacles to improving visibility, and this is particularly true when it comes to pre-pickup and drop-off scheduling. Increased visibility enables distributors to drastically improve warehouse management by making staging processes more efficient and flexible while reducing detention costs. Route planning and optimization have long been core priorities for transport companies, and powerful digital tools have been developed to help them pursue these goals. Distributors need access to the same real-time data carriers are using to manage their fleets.  

59% of companies adopted new supply chain risk management practices in recent years. And no wonder — from the COVID-19 pandemic to persistent economic instability, disruptions have been rife, and resilience has become a core priority. According to McKinsey, “end-to-end visibility, high-quality master data and effective scenario planning” are the characteristics that underpin resilient supply chains. Distributors need to focus on all three.  

How Distributors Can Increase Visibility

Distributors should never have to wonder whether a truck will show up on time, nor should they be forced to adjust warehouse operations at the last minute to accommodate a late arrival or handle a cancellation. Freight companies and other carriers should want to avoid these outcomes, as they can undermine supply chain relationships and lead to lost business. While distributors are still dealing with delivery headaches every day, technology exists to address this problem and help carriers and warehouses optimize their operations at the same time.  

According to Gartner, one of the biggest shifts in the transportation industry has been the adoption of cloud-based TMS solutions. Of the companies that implemented these solutions, nearly three-quarters said they did so to improve visibility. Gartner notes that there has been a focus on “improving transportation visibility in the past, but the degree of importance has increased significantly.” Gartner also explains that “real-time transportation visibility” can be a component of TMS deployments, which can provide “enhanced ETA calculations and predictions along with other features such over-the-map visualization, event management and track and trace functionality.”  

As ELDs and TMS solutions become more comprehensive and sophisticated, the data and insights they generate should be shared more widely across the supply chain. This is especially important for distributors, as their operations are directly tied to the consistency and transparency of their transportation partners.  

Optimizing Warehouse Operations with Real-Time Data

The shift toward TMS solutions is part of a broader digital transformation for supply chains. McKinsey reports that 79% of supply chain leaders say they have implemented digital dashboards for end-to-end visibility — a significant increase over previous years. The rapid emergence of transformative technology like AI will continue to propel this trend. Half of supply chain organizations are already investing in infrastructure that supports AI analytics, and real-time decision-making is the top AI use case for supply chains.  

At a time when the technology for route planning, delivery monitoring, and overall fleet management has never been more effective, this technology should benefit distributors as well as trucking companies. This means integrating ELDs and TMS systems more widely across the supply chain, which will give warehouses and shippers the data they need to make informed decisions about staging processes and other operations.   

This won’t just help supply chain partners conduct more efficient daily operations — it will also prepare them for disruptions. Although supply chains have healed after widespread chaos in recent years, a 2024 PwC survey of operations executives and supply chain officers found that disruptions remain their top concern. This is another reason why visibility and resilience are so important — distributors and their partners can never know when another crisis will arise, and they need to be capable of adapting quickly.  

In the meantime, it’s time for distributors to move beyond a status quo that forces them to put up with regular disruptions to their warehouse activities due to late or cancelled deliveries. Distributors should recognize that the actionable data they need to increase efficiency, customer satisfaction, and margins is already available. They just need to work with their transportation partners to ensure that this data is visible, which will allow them to adjust their operations and strategic planning in real-time.