10 Best Yard Management Tools for Improving Transload Efficiency in 2024

Ready to take yard management from hard to easy? 

For your transloading or intermodal shipping yard, proper dock scheduling is everything.

With door dock scheduling inefficiencies, transloading operations can easily stall because of scheduling conflicts and out–of–control yard congestion.  

A Vector study established that, for 39% of transload yards, dock scheduling is their biggest challenge. This is primarily because of manual processes that led to inefficient door assignments.

So you need to leverage the top transload yard management tools that can help you automate door scheduling to eliminate scheduling conflicts and boost efficiency. 

The right tool will give you real-time insights into empty docks and inbound and outgoing cargo, including fine details about postponements and delays. This enables you to allocate docks optimally for faster loading and unloading operations. 

In this article, we’ll discuss the best yard management tools for improving transload efficiency in 2024 to help you turbocharge productivity and profitability. 

Quick summary: 

1. transloads.co – Best for managing transloading documents. 

2. C3 Yard – Best for improving gate control operations.

3. YardView – Best for efficient dock appointment scheduling.

4. R4 Yard – Best for improving collaboration in transload yards.

5. Smart EIR – Best for yards specializing in container transloading.

Let’s get started. 

1. transloads.co

transloads.co can help you digitize your workflow.  

It gives you customizable BoL forms and other electronic documents to help you ditch the clipboards. So you can improve transload ROI by moving to a paperless workflow with fewer printing, sorting, storage, and other paper-related costs. 

Moreover, transloads.co lets you capture pending and in-transit shipments, so that you can allocate resources more efficiently to reduce wait times for trucks. 

On top of that, our software has important invoicing functions that help speed up payment cycles for your transload shipping business to improve cash flow. This helps you free up funds to take on new orders and expand your capacity. 

Best features: 

• transloads.co delivers a cloud-based transload management system, which gives you remote access to manuals and documents at large. It also has important communication features to help enhance collaboration for your transload yard. 
• You also get a demurrage clock that helps you keep track of the time rail cars spend at your facility to avoid rail demurrage. It even lets you drag-and-drop rail car positions to help your staff process outbound cargo faster & more accurately. 
• It gives you vital analytics about your business and also lets you generate essential reports as well. This enables you to improve your operational intelligence to grow your business and transload new types of commodities. 

Pricing: 

• 30-day free trial. 
• Starting plan: $29.95 per payload. 

Verdict 

tansloads.co gives you e-signatures & customizable templates to help streamline paperwork and improve document creation & efficiency for your transload facility. In addition, our software also offers holistic yard improvement right from track management to warehouse operations, giving you end-to-end process improvement.

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2. C3 Yard 

Want to track inbound shipments better? 

C3 Yard is used by some of the top transload companies because it enables real-time communication with drivers, which enables you to strategically allocate and prepare yard assets and operations. 

Crucially, C3 Yard helps automate gate operations and ditch manual phone calls and logs for a more streamlined system that increases gate throughput. 

With its yard control tower, you can instantly confirm the locations of trailers and tractors. Furthermore, it has other key transload management features like empty trailer tracking to maximize utilization. 

Best features: 

• You also get important dock management features, including important door-turn reports. With this information, you can coordinate the flow of trailers better and more efficiently to improve worker productivity and reduce transloading delays. 
• C3 Yard also lets you keep track of seal numbers digitally rather than relying on inefficient paper forms or spreadsheets. This makes it easier for your transload yard to identify seal discrepancies and reduce the risk of cargo tampering. 
• It also gives you important inbound planning tools that work off of historical yard data to forecast demands for the day. As a result, you can easily plan out daily activities, allocate work and plan staffing solutions to meet demand spikes.

Pricing: 

• No free trial. 
• Contact C3 Yard for pricing. 

Verdict 

If gate control has been very challenging, C3 Yard is one of the top yard management tools due to gate control features that streamline gate operations. However, the software has very many complex functionalities that may take you a while to fully master and put to work, which I find significantly increases its time-to-value. 

Schedule a free demo

3. YardView 

YardView gives you excellent yard visibility. 

Using digital twin yard management technology, it provides a bird’s eye view of on-site operations including the location of key assets. This enables you to improve space utilization for your intermodal or transload shipping small business. 

Additionally, it also gives you dock appointment scheduling functions to help you plan the flow of traffic and minimize truck congestion for your transload yard.

Want better control over your inventory?

When you choose a great transloading software like YardView, you also get inventory trailer tracking to help you minimize inventory errors and boost transloading efficiency. 

Best features: 

• You can stack load assignments and assign them to drivers, trailers, and specific transload staff for highly efficient task allocation. In addition, you also get performance reports to help you improve yard efficiency and staff productivity.
• YardView integrates with various ERPs, TRMs, and WMSs to help unite data across all the different platforms you rely on to run your transload operations. As a result, it gives you excellent business intelligence to improve decision-making.
• It also has important email automation features that help you to automatically send PoD and other types of emails to partners, carriers, and your customers. This helps you improve communication and elevate customer satisfaction. 

Pricing: 

• No free trial. 
• Contact YardView for pricing. 

Verdict 

YardView is an excellent option if you’d like to improve dock appointment scheduling and minimize driver wait times and detention fees for your transload facility. However, I’ve noticed that while it does support other underlying systems such as your ERP, integration can take as long as six weeks, and this greatly increases downtime. 

Schedule a free demo 

4. R4 Yard

Do you run multiple yards or transloading facilities? 

If so, R4 Yard is an excellent choice. It allows you to add multiple maps to its platform, which enables more efficient yard location management for all the yards under your supervision in one place to turbocharge efficiency and productivity. 

Moreover, it lets you configure and track custom and advanced data about your transloading yard, helping to meet the unique needs of your facility. 

R4 Yard also has other key features of transloading software, such as centralized communication. So it’s one of the top yard management tools to help you improve collaboration for your yard. 

Best features: 

• R4 Yard has a dock door scheduling module that helps you plan loading operations based on warehouse capacity, labor requirements, and shipment type. This helps ensure the better flow of goods and maximizes door utilization. 
• You also get an asset management system that consolidates all the information about goods in your inventory into one centralized dashboard. With this feature, you can improve inventory accuracy and also increase worker productivity. 
• It also gives you a color-coded bird’s eye view, which enables you to implement a standardized and intuitive way of organizing yard assets. This reduces confusion, differentiates between different zones easily & makes it simpler to track assets.

Pricing: 

• No free trial. 
• Contact R4 Yard for pricing. 

Verdict 

R4 Yard has excellent yard and communication management features, so I recommend it for streamlining and coordinating yard workers and improving collaboration at large. However, it splits its software into different modules to run different yard operations, with each priced separately, which really inflates your software maintenance costs. 

Schedule a free demo

5. Smart EIR

Smart EIR is great if you frequently transload containers.

It gives you real-time container damage reporting, which helps you identify and deal with damaged freight. This makes it one of the best transloading software to help you reduce the risk of cargo rejection and preserve your business’s reputation. 

You also get photographic evidence of container conditions and seal numbers to help ensure smooth container transfers and defend against claims. 

Just like transloads.co, choosing a transloading management system like Smart EIR also helps you accelerate container processing by digitizing your operations. This enables you to create a more efficient and greener transload yard.

Best features: 

• Smart EIR is built upon blockchain technology and is complemented by advanced mobile validation features. This gives you advanced authorization management to help you keep sensitive information safe from cyber threats.
• It pairs its transloading management platform with smart cameras and image recognition systems to give you real-time analytics about your container. This helps you gauge the condition of containers for efficient order initiation. 
• Smart EIR also gives you digital cargo receipts to further lower your dependence on messy and error-prone paper records. You can send professional invoices to clients to create a great brand image and ensure more accurate invoicing. 

Pricing: 

• No free trial. 
• Starting plan: $499 per month.  

Verdict 

Smart EIR offers automated container activity insights, including real-time visualizations, and this goes a long way to helping you improve efficiency during container transloading. That said, I’ve realized that its features are mostly geared toward containers, so it may be unideal if you transload other types of commodities. 

Schedule a free demo

6. Yard Management Solutions

Unsure which trailers arrived first?

Yard Management Solutions makes such problems a thing of the past with real time trailer visibility, making it popular with the best transload service companies. You get time-stamped visibility on cargo aging so you can know who to tend to first. 

In addition, it tracks important information about the activities and performances of yard spotters to help you improve efficiency and productivity. 

It also gives intermodal and transload shipping businesses such as yours access to key visualizations and reports about yard activities. So it’s one of the top yard management tools to minimize your administrative workload. 

Best features: 

• Yard Management Solutions also gives you a smart yard “X-ray vision” module that allows you to figure out trailer contents before opening them. This helps improve inventory visibility and information and enables strategic transloading. 
• It also provides comprehensive historical data of yard activities, including your yard’s throughput and the types of commodities you frequently transload. With this information, you can uncover valuable insights about market patterns. 
• Via its Eagle View dashboard, you can also coordinate yard drivers more effectively. It lets you send move requests to them digitally, as opposed to communicating via inefficient radio channels for more precise trailer shifting. 

Pricing: 

• No free trial.
• Contact Yard Management Solutions for pricing. 

Verdict 

Yard Management Solutions has advanced yard driver and spotter management features, so I recommend it if improving yard driver efficiencies is a pressing concern. Nevertheless, the Eagle View feature, which provides real-time yard visibility, becomes slow and inefficient with larger spaces so it’s not great if you run a very large yard. 

Schedule a free demo

7. 4SIGHT Connect 

4SIGHT Connect delivers a full-stack yard solution. 

It provides robust data access for complex yard operations, helping you improve logistical performance with key facts about transloading activities at your facility.

Furthermore, you also get digital master control panels with its dock management module that helps digitize dock operations & reduce mistakes. 

Just like transloads.co, it can help optimize yard operations in other aspects as well. For example, you can create guided sequences of operations to improve the positioning of trucks and trailers, thereby enabling dock workers to swing into action sooner. 

Best features: 

• You also get important dock management features, which describe details about dock statuses such as the truck present and how long it’s been there. It even sends out text messages to drivers when a dock is empty to accelerate loading.
• 4SIGHT Connnect’s FastPass module helps streamline gate operations right from when trucks pull up to your gates. It helps process incoming trucks, and automatically notifies drivers of where to go after check-in to keep traffic moving.
• It also delivers an advanced equipment monitoring system that lets you monitor the restraints on trailers and other transloading machinery in real-time. This data can help you identify potentially dangerous situations to improve worker safety.  

Pricing: 

• No free trial.
• Contact 4SIGHT Connect for pricing. 

Verdict 

With guide truck positioning features and digital master control panels for docks, 4SIGHT Connect is a great option to help you improve gate and dock efficiency. However, I’ve established that the software is very dock management-centric, and therefore has very rudimentary features in other areas like inventory and invoicing. 

Schedule a free demo

8. Gatego 

Is manual data entry a constant headache in your yard? 

Gatego gives you a better way of capturing operational data by way of customizable electronic check-in forms. You also get customizable BoL templates which further lower data entry needs. 

What’s more, it provides an offline mobile app that allows you to get around internet outages to keep freight moving and minimize disruptions. 

If you’d like to implement mobile yard management, Gatego is one of the best transload yard management tools because of its offline mobile application that helps minimize disruptions from internet outages. 

Best features: 

• Gatego offers a robust issue reporting system, which enables your field crew to log issues like damages from received cargo. This helps you improve asset condition transparency and avoid getting the blame for damages you didn’t do. 
• You get an interactive map that gives you a real-time layout of yard inventory. It even lets you hover over trailers to reveal cargo information and filter assets by their statuses, asset type, and dwell time to help optimize yard operations. 
• It also doubles up as a tasking application that lets you assign loading tasks to dock workers and transload operators. This helps you to distribute workloads evenly, prioritize tasks more effectively, and amplify employee productivity. 

Pricing: 

• Unlimited free plan.
• Starting plan: $950 per month. 

Verdict 

Gatego has an excellent mobile app, which has vital offline access features that help you to keep transload yard operations running smoothly even without an internet connection. Nonetheless, I’ve noticed its inventory management module has integration issues with some ERPs and WMSs and this creates the risk of alienating data. 

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9. GoRamp

GoRamp helps you get more out of your workforce. 

It’s one of the best transload management systems for yards in this regard, thanks to its advanced performance analytics which help improve worker productivity. 

In addition, it enables cloud-based supply chain management, giving you real-time analytics to help track inbound trucks better to avoid yard congestion. 

Want to speed up transloading operations? 

GoRamp’s calendar scheduling feature allows you to lay out loading and unloading activities to minimize idle times, improve transloading ROI, and increase profitability. 

Best features: 

• You get smart automations with GoRamp, which helps take over tasks like checking in trailers and trucks and assigning transload tasks to dock workers. As a result, it takes the edge off manual tasks to improve efficiency and productivity. 
• It provides an advanced API that enables two-way data flow between its yard management platform and your ERP, TMS, or WMS system. So it can help unite data about your transloading business and decrease your maintenance burden.
• GoRamp also gives you real-time visibility of your yard in its entirety, letting you monitor docks, gates, and parking spaces. So you won’t have to trudge up and down your facility reconciling information, and this makes you more productive. 

Pricing: 

• No free trial. 
• Contact GoRamp for pricing. 

Verdict 

GoRamp’s calendaring feature and performance analytics make it a great choice if you want to allocate tasks more efficiently and stay on top of worker activities to improve output. However, I’ve noticed that it doesn’t really leave much room for customization, and this makes it challenging to adapt the solution to your business’s unique needs. 

Schedule a free demo

10. VAS

Do you specialize in transloading bulk goods? 

If that’s the case, VAS is one of the top yard management tools because it helps you improve transloading from rail to truck for bulk cargo like sand, cement, and asphalt, among others. 

It also has a dispatch module that helps you pre-register customer orders so you can prepare docks and workers ahead of schedule to minimize wait times. 

Just like transloads.co, when you choose a transloading software like VAS, you can also automatically direct drivers to the right loading or unloading areas by way of RFID cards to improve yard efficiency. 

Best features: 

• It also gives you digital checklists, load bills, and delivery bills, helping you fast-track paperwork so trucks can get loaded & leave quickly. This is complemented by digital weighing to help observe weight requirements. 
• VAS offers self-service terminals powered by either QR, TAN or RFID cards where drivers can check themselves in. This means fewer routine check-in tasks for employees, enabling you to ease staff shortages and boost efficiency. 
• It also augments webcams and other physical control measures with digital security strategies like QR codes to improve security at your facility. Furthermore, it creates regular data backups to improve disaster recovery for your yard. 

Pricing: 

• No free trial. 
• Contact SAP Yard Logistics for pricing. 

Verdict 

VAS is a great tool for handling bulk goods like cement, lime and sand, among others, because it’s specially built to help improve the transloading of these commodities. However, it’s an expensive yard management solution targeting large-scale operations so it may not be the most cost-efficient solution if you’re running a small reload yard. 

Schedule a free demo

Conclusion

Poor yard visibility can stall operations. 

It makes it easy to lose track of the location of various resources in your facility. 

Consequently, you’ll waste a lot of time chasing after yard assets such as trailers, trucks, and workers at the expense of actual transloading activities.  

A FourKites study revealed that 21% of yard workers struggle to locate assets in time. This made it the second top-most challenge and it was responsible for several operational delays. 

By utilizing the best transload yard management tools, you can get real-time data about the location of yard assets for faster retrieval. All things considered, I recommend transloads.co which helps you track shipments and inventory for improved efficiency. 

Click here to start your free transloads.co trial and automate routine work for your transload yard to boost productivity. 

With our platform, you’ll also optimize the utilization of yard space, improve dock scheduling efficiency, and streamline transloading collaboration.