January 2024 product roundup: Road freight tracking and custom properties

A new year calls for a new mode!

Moving goods across the world often depends on an intricate network of partners and transportation methods. A good freight visibility solution needs to provide seamless insight into the journey of your goods – regardless of the mode being used to transport them. 

That’s why we’re starting off the year with the launch of road freight tracking. Road tracking complements Beacon’s existing ocean and air cargo capabilities, and marks a major milestone in our mission to equip supply chain and logistics teams with a single source of truth for freight visibility. 

Other recent updates include the introduction of custom data fields and a host of new default properties to give you improved visibility and flexibility. 

Keep scrolling for a full rundown of what’s new in Beacon this month…

‍

Road freight tracking 

Beacon connects with telematics devices installed on the fleets of 158,000 global road carriers to provide live ETA and journey distance information. Tracking data is refreshed every 15 minutes.  

Equipped with this real-time data, logistics teams and warehouses can better plan for the arrival of goods and you can ensure supply chain partners and customers have access to the information they need to do their jobs.

To track a road shipment in Beacon, all you need is the:

• License plate
• Pick-up address (loading station)
• Pick-up timeslot 
• Drop-off address (unloading station)
• A unique shipment identifier

Pick-up and drop-off addresses are set up and stored in your address book, meaning you just have to do a one-time set-up of your common locations.

If your carrier is not currently supported, getting them set up is easy. Your Beacon Customer Success Manager will guide you through the process.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing updated email notifications and reporting to give you further insight into the movement of goods by road.

‍

More data fields for better visibility

To help you consolidate all the information you need in one place and gain more flexibility in how you search shipments, we’ve launched custom data fields. 

You can now define additional fields to best suit your needs. These can be used to keep track of information such as cargo weight, number of pallets, consignee contact information, product category or any other relevant details. 

In addition to custom options, we’ve also added several new default fields including:

• Consignee (recipient of goods), for ocean, air and road shipments 
• Master bill of lading (MBL), for ocean shipments
• House bill of lading (HBL), for ocean shipments
• House air waybill (HWAB), for air shipments 

All new data fields will display on tracking cards, can be populated via CSV upload, and are searchable in your Beacon dashboard. 

Tracking cards have also been updated to display the email of the user who uploaded a shipment to the platform and the date it was added. 

‍

Step into the future of freight tracking

Ready to discover the power of automated, real-time freight tracking with Beacon? Start your free trial to track your first 60 shipments on us.