Billions of dollars in freight claims are filed each year against less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers for things like lost or stolen goods, overcharges, or return authorization (RA) cases. For a major carrier, that adds up to tens of thousands of LTL claims every year. Each claim needs to be processed and adjudicated with the shipper.
By its very nature, LTL is more prone to freight claims than truckload (TL) due to the greater number of touches for each shipment. That’s why claims management is a significant pain point for many LTL carriers who often dedicate several employees to manually entering claim information. This consumes human resources time and creates the risk of data input errors.
MercuryGate’s MercuryMyEZClaim addresses these issues to drive significant cost savings through efficient, automated LTL claims processing. The technology solution eliminates entry for manual data like emails, faxes, and spreadsheets by auto-populating claim forms. MercuryMyEZClaim centralizes record keeping and delivers reports needed to identify and eliminate claim causes across your business.
The Importance of LTL Claims Integration
Less-than-Truckload is an economical transportation mode that often consolidates items from multiple shippers. LTL is often used to move big and bulky freight, and LTL shipment weights range between 150 and 15,000 pounds.
When freight claims arise, handling them often becomes clunky and slow, either through manual processing or a less-than-ideal TMS module. It’s a cost center for LTL carriers, but making it as seamless as possible retains valuable shipper accounts.
It creates an experience that benefits LTL carriers and LTL shippers by:
- Scheduling and automating labor-intensive activities.
- Creating a centralized document repository.
- Streamlining, automating, and saving all communications.
How Freight Claims Integration Works With MercuryGate
Through API calls to the LTL carrier’s TMS, MercuryMyEZClaim pulls out all relevant shipment information, including pickup/delivery time, pallet quantity, shipment class & weight, charges, and delivery instructions. The information auto-populates into a claims form.
This avoids the hassle and time involved in manually filling in a PDF form, which has to be scanned and sent, then manually processed on the carrier end.
With MercuryMyEZClaim, shippers simply visit the LTL claim portal to:
- Edit product information on the claim.
- Attach supporting documents (bill of lading, receipts, etc.).
- Send it.
By centralizing all claim-related data, users can handle them more efficiently and gain better insights into freight operations, reducing the number of open claims.
MercuryMyEZClaim integrates with many major carriers to facilitate direct online claims filing, including:
- XPO Logistics
- Maersk (Pilot Freight)
- Frozen Food Express
- Fusion Transport
- The Custom Companies
- The Radiant Companies
- BTX Transportation
- Leonard’s Express
- Averitt Express
- Estes Express
- Southeastern Freight Lines
- Old Dominion Freight Lines
MercuryGate LTL Integration Success Stories
The Custom Companies, a regional LTL carrier with operations in the Chicagoland and Los Angeles areas, had an extremely cumbersome claims process. It involved manual data input from emails and faxes into its TMS and a separate claims management module, then uploading it into a file system. Users had to constantly go back and look at old correspondence in the file-share system to figure out where they left off with a particular claim.
Calculate your potential Saving While Using an enterprise TMS
LTL Freight Claims Optimized Through Automation
Visit our ROI calculator for a quick, two-question quiz to estimate your cost savings using MercuryMyEZClaim.
Learn more about how The Customs Companies leveraged the solution to reduce their labor burden and improve the customer claims experience in this webinar.
