Even before the Covid pandemic, air cargo operators were under increasing pressure to reduce costs. achieve faster transit times and cut emissions, from wheels down to final delivery to customers. This part of the chain is very much in the hands of the road feeder operators serving this market. The Trucking CDM platform from the Amsterdam-based software innovator CargoHub, provides transparency, predictability and a slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers.

Now CargoHub, together with Emirates Airlines, and road feeder service provider, Jan de Rijk, one of the main players with a total fleet of over 1000 vehicles, are collaborating in a Cargo iQ sub-working group.

Their objective is to improve communication between road feeder services and airlines on road segments of an air cargo shipment journey. In a first pilot scheme, various scenarios are carried out with live air cargo shipments on truck routes. A second pilot will include more trial participants. The aim is to test Cargo iQ’s new Road Feeder Services messaging standards and interaction, via messaging or API, between CargoHub’s Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) platform and the individual systems of airline and trucking company.

Cargo iQ is setting milestone requirements for shipment updates and defining which messages need to be sent by the RFS provider, CargoHub standardizes the content by ‘translating them for the airlines. Ultimately, the RFS specification will be integrated into the Cargo iQ Master Operating Plan and the potential IT service solutions will be standardized to meet Cargo iQ requirements. Members may then choose one of the potential providers.

CargoHub, a specialist in software solutions for air cargo operators, not only transfers messages but provides a single window solution for trucking, handlers and airlines to improve planning processes by providing movement, capacity and cargo availability information. The fact that the trucking companies operate with a variety of systems, demands a universal common platform available for all parties. Now it has the opportunity to show that it is possible in practice.

“The goal is to minimise loading and unloading times, thus increasing the speed of air cargo transportation by road,” said Raoul Paul, chief executive officer, CargoHub. “At the same time, airlines will benefit from end-to-end supply chain visibility of air cargo shipments subjected to road transport. Our team has worked hard over the past two years to build an innovative platform based on the latest technologies to provide end-to-end digital logistics and transport supply chain visibility, while delivering status updates in the required format”