Estes Signs On DDC Intelligence for Bills of Lading

Estes logo on truck door
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Estes Express Lines, a privately owned freight transportation carrier, added to its existing billing program with DDC FPO by migrating its bill of lading volume to the provider’s machine-learning, Software-as-a-Service program, DDC Intelligence, Estes said in a Sept. 23 news release.

“Freight billing is a foundational event for our customers,” said Tad Blackburn, Estes vice president of administration. “Yet the process itself is underestimated. It’s incredibly complex and difficult with so many different formats and tens of thousands of templates.”

With recent acceleration in data demands that shippers require, Blackburn said automating more and increasing efficiency levels is imperative.

The company said it has been partnering with DDC FPO since 2011. Now managing more than 33,000 bills per night for Estes, DDC has begun migrating the carrier’s bill volume to DDC Intelligence.

Offered as a service, the solution uses a hybrid template-based and template-free model paired with freight billing validation. The technology component grows smarter with every bill of lading it processes, Estes officials said. Estes said the quicker service will “move the needle for their LTL operation” with speed, accuracy and cost containment.

“Our customers want the information faster and faster,” Blackburn said in a statement. “It’s really important for us to get the data back to them as fast as humanly possible.”

Testing began at the end of last year, and the official migration kicked off Aug. 5, Blackburn said.

DDC FPO officials said the company has 30 years of business process outsourcing experience, and processes 30% of all LTL bills in North America. The DDC Group, based near Liverpool in the United Kingdom, has more than 7,000 employees. Estes, based in Richmond, Va., ranks No. 13 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America. Transport Topics

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