Outpost, the Austin-based operator of truck terminals throughout the U.S., introduced Thursday that it’s rolling out a gate automation platform developed by the corporate’s engineering crew situated in Seattle.
The platform makes use of laptop imaginative and prescient and synthetic intelligence in a bid to chop prices, enhance safety, remove entry and exit delays, and robotically seize extra dependable information.
Outpost educated and examined the platform throughout greater than 1 million gate occasions on the greater than 20 properties that it owns, and is making the expertise obtainable to shippers, enterprise fleets, and different terminal operators.
Human gate operators have lengthy been thought of a obligatory price of doing enterprise throughout the trucking business. In response to Outpost, staffing a single gate 24/7 sometimes prices $25,000 monthly. However handbook checks can miss important points like trailer mismatches, gear situation, and unauthorized entry.
The gate automation platform is constructed to know each car, driver, doc, and anomaly, and repeatedly study and enhance with every gate occasion. Key capabilities — which allow drivers to enter and exit a yard with out stopping — embrace:
- Multi-part car identification: Detecting car sort, make, mannequin, colour, trailer class, and gas sort.
- ID and compliance recognition: Studying USDOT and MC numbers, license plates, trailer and container IDs, chassis markings, hazmat placards, pink tags, and firm logos.
- Harm and security inspection: Detecting dents, rust, scratches, damaged lights, lacking mud flaps, tire tread and sidewall points, improper driver security gear, and dashboard obstructions.
- Safety verification: Figuring out seal presence, confirming driver id via face-to-ID matching, validating license authenticity, and flagging tractor-trailer mis-dispatches.
- Situational consciousness: Monitoring gear motion, velocity, full stops, tailgates, and gate malfunctions.
- Doc and cargo intelligence: Extracting information from payments of lading and comparable paperwork; detecting trailer and container cargo.
The platform additionally options using AI voice brokers on the gate (see video above), that are able to greeting every driver, administering customary working procedures, answering questions, and issuing site-specific directions.
Outpost CTO Greg Akselrod mentioned the corporate’s mission is to “construct the spine of freight” and lengthen its expertise footprint past its personal properties.
“By linking service terminals and drop yards right into a single operational community, we’re enabling a brand new degree of visibility and coordination throughout the freight ecosystem, turning the gate from a price middle right into a strategic management level,” Akselrod mentioned in a press release.
Omaha, Neb.-based transportation and logistics firm Werner Enterprises is an early person of the brand new platform.
“Outpost is taking the ache out of gate operations,” mentioned Ryan Gass, VP of Security, Terminal Administration, Safety and Services Upkeep at Werner. “Our drivers get via quicker, our groups have higher visibility, and our gear is safer.”
Based in 2022, Outpost raised a $12.5 million Collection A funding spherical in April 2024. The corporate’s engineering and advertising middle is situated in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, with a couple of dozen workers based mostly within the metropolis and one other 10 who report in remotely.
Associated: Full record of engineering facilities within the Seattle area
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