I wish I was better at computers and engineering.

In defense of the companies behind the in-cab devices. Think there's a lot of other issues that they have to worry about that smartphone makers don't have to consider. Similar to why the display units on planes cost over $1000 each when an iPad is much better and cheaper. There's probably some safety engineering involved that is similar to what makers of the seat-back screens have to consider when designing their devices: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3034196...k-screens-here-is-why-thats-a-great-design-mo

As for the OP's original intent. Those thoughts were exactly why my team and I looked heavily into the industry. But as @n3ss stated, the technical problem isn't hard, it's getting users to move away from what they've been doing for years to new workflows. Having connections to higher-ups at various large carriers will also help move the needle a bit.

Scanner Pro and CamScanner are excellent general mobile scanning applications. We are trying to bring that level of refinement over to a tool targeted directly at OTR freight. We still have a ways to go, but we think our web application portion of the service outdoes any of the other offerings, general or specific to the trucking industry such as Transflo or Drive Axle. Would love to connect with heavy users of any of the scanning apps to pick their brain.

Any of you guys heading to MATS or GATS?

 

I wish I were better at choosing Power Ball numbers, Mega Millions numbers, and really hot chicks phone numbers.

 

I don't think it would be too hard to take an already existing OCR and search for different fields to input into a standardized transflo cover page. That's the easy part. The challenge is the fact that every BOL has a different layout. So what you want to do is program a barcode system that takes all that info that the shipper inputs into their computer to print the BOL and when you scan the barcode it lines up that information to the tansflo. Then have a fax program tied into it that can read their barcodes. Actually, all of this is the easy part. While learning how to program as you program it, you can write this thing in less than a month. Google has software you can license that handles the OCR and faxing, all you have to do is put the code in, to use it.

The hard part, convincing a warehouse that they need new software to integrate with Transflo and TripPak and your company's paperwork, when they really have no use for them, and convince other trucking companies to jump on board with this idea. Basically, you'd have to standardize the paperwork of the entire transportation industry, which is a great idea to do anyway. But almost everyone is going to fight against it and stick with what they know and has proven itself to work. It's not impossible, but it's going to be a second full time job marketing that software. You'd obviously start with the big companies who also contract out (UPS, FedEx, Conway, pretty much every corporate department store, etc) and work your way smaller.

Then there's also the testing phase of that. You'd need your company or your own fleet doing a lot of testing. It's going to be about a 1-3 year long alpha and beta test before you can release it virtually bug free.

So there's your plan. Make this idea happen.

 

rockstar_nj, that's exactly the types of problem we see ourselves dealing with. The technical challenges are known and clear to us how they should be solved. We currently OCR all documents in our application, the next step is for us to map the documents so that we can link text to fields. Unfortunately, as you touched on, that's a lot of different document formats to map.

On the industry side, I think people know that workflows can be more efficient, that data doesn't need to be entered more than once. But it's tough for people to change when they've been working a particular way for years. So the challenge is to wow them so much with the software that it makes total sense for them to jump onboard. In our ideal world, load data is entered only once by one party in a load's lifecycle and gets transmitted to all other parties. Just need to ramp up traction to show the value.

 

Well I just throw my billis in the mail while im getting fuel and a 10 lbs primter scanner that I download my stuff from my phone from permits to porn if I want

 

Anf no its not the galaxy s5 and 6next are the best phones on the market

 

O and with my tablet I can run a loose leafe paper log

 

And its dot recognized

 

Suck it up and deal with it, expecting the customer to change something for the driver is rather ridiculous.

 

You hire people to do whatever you need done, whether as an employee or contractor. Just get patents, and NDA's sorted before you even deal with outside workers and don't send it overseas for manufacturing, they will steal the design and make it cheaper for themselves and they're not governed by U.S. law, that's why some US manufactures are coming back to shore licking their wounds from getting ripped off.