A forwarder in northern Germany, about 40 trucks in groupage traffic. Each dispatcher called a driver three to five times a day to ask when he would reach the dock. Today: zero calls about arrivals. The telematics is read every 15 minutes, and dock and customer get the notice automatically. That is the number. The story is why it took so long for anyone to use data that was already there.
The dispatcher told me on the phone: "We have a problem that sounds stupid. But it costs us money every day." His dispatch team did not know when their own trucks would arrive at the dock.
Every vehicle has a telematics unit. It reports position, speed and consumption. On screen, the dispatcher sees every truck. An estimated arrival time is there too.
The problem is direction. The interface shows everything and reports nothing. No hint, no mail, no signal when a vehicle approaches a dock. The dispatcher would have to watch the map all day. He plans 200 orders on the side, so he picks up the phone. First the driver on the motorway. Then the customer: "About thirty minutes." A traffic jam later, the game starts again.
This is not one company's quirk. The German Federal Office for Goods Transport (BAG, today BALM) published a special report on loading docks. Its most promising measures against waiting times: time slots and IT-based advance notice. Its central finding: communication between forwarder and consignee. The report is older. The problem is not.
There was no open API for third parties when the project started. The manufacturer's partner interface requires certification. For a forwarder that needs one building block, that is not an option. The CSV export has to be triggered by hand and contains no live position.
That left the web interface. In the first stage our service operated it the way an employee would: log in, open the vehicle list, read the positions. (Yes, less elegant than an API. It ran on day three anyway.)
Two traps from this phase. The interface shows placeholders on first load; the real values arrive one to two seconds later. And the arrival shows as "in 2 hours 30 minutes", not as a time. With time zones and daylight saving, that detail cost us two days.
The telematics sends a position only every ten minutes. We measured that; we did not assume it. Reading more often yields no new data, it only loads the system. So: 15 minutes. That is enough to notify 30 minutes before the dock reliably.
Position alone says little. The service knows the tour: the next destination, the time slot there. From position, remaining distance and the driving time of the last segments it calculates the arrival. If a vehicle stands still for more than 20 minutes away from any destination, the service treats it as a break or a jam, and the arrival shifts.
Notices go out in two cases: 30 minutes before the dock, and when the arrival shifts by more than 15 minutes. Each notice is checked first. Is there an address for the dock? Was there already a notice in the last 30 minutes? Nobody gets five mails for the same truck.
Every run writes an entry: when read, how many vehicles, how many notices. If the service misses two intervals, we get an alarm before the customer notices.
Later we switched to the system's position report, which the manufacturer delivers every ten minutes. Dispatch did not notice the switch. That is the part you never see on a slide, and it decides whether a service like this lasts two years.
The dispatcher: "I look at the list in the morning and know who arrives when. If something shifts, I see it before the customer calls."
An honest caveat: these are numbers from one operation with 40 vehicles and regular customers. In charter traffic with new unloading points every day, the service lacks the dock address and only notifies dispatch.
In Italy, since May 2025, loading and unloading has a 90-minute limit. Above it, shippers and forwarders owe 100 euros per started hour (Verkehrsrundschau, 11 November 2025). Proof runs through second-generation tachograph data, GPS and the advance notice. If you cannot prove the arrival from telematics, you can neither claim waiting time nor warn the dock. The position is no longer just dispatch. It is evidence.
The data is usually there. What is missing is the service that brings it together and reports on its own. Without an API it still works, through the interface, and you switch later. The interval has to match the source: a telematics unit that sends every ten minutes delivers nothing new at a one-minute poll. And the watchdog counts notices, not runs.
Does your dispatch call drivers to ask for arrival times? Tell me your telematics system and your TMS. I will show you, on the protocol of our service, what the first notice would look like at your company. Ask for a process check: 30 minutes, no sales pitch.
