XLT Transport, a general freight carrier in Acheson, Alberta, hauls structural steel, pipe, and pipe spools across Western Canada. Dispatcher and HR manager Janelle Sutherland went live on Axon as she joined the company in late 2019. Orders no longer vanish under a pile of paper, and she can send the invoice before the truck is back in the yard.
Q&A
How has your experience been with Axon?
When I started with XLT, Axon had just been implemented. Nobody had used it yet. It was all ready to go on the computer. We started it, and it made everything so much easier.
Prior to that we’d been doing handwritten BOLs, all manual dispatching and everything. When Axon came into play, it was amazing how easy it made it to record all the information that was relevant to every load, and how accessible it was to reference things: notes and comments for each load, pricing, all of it. It’s a really great program. It’s helped us tremendously. We’re a small operation, but even on that level it’s been excellent.
How did you find the training and support?
Right before we went fully into it, we did some over-the-phone training. That was very late 2019, right before COVID, so all of our training we did over the phone. I can’t remember the lady’s name that trained us, but she was phenomenal. Nicole and I did it, and it was easy to catch on to and follow.
The support with Axon is fantastic. They’re there at the snap of a finger. Once in a while you get caught wondering if you can do something a certain way, you send a message, they call right back, get online, and walk you through it. They’re very hands-on, very accessible, and they were very thorough with the explanation.
Axon is our first trucking software, so we really have nothing to compare it to. But I don’t know that we would need to. It’s pretty well got everything that we need. The agents on the support line have been absolutely fantastic.
How has Axon changed invoicing and driver pay?
The driver modules and the payroll modules are very user-friendly. Before, payroll was sort of a check-just-a-thing. With Axon we’re able to print the driver statement, which shows in detail every load, every order, whether it’s a flat rate or hourly. It breaks it down quite nicely.
When the driver gets it, he can differentiate where his pay is coming from. On our side, when there are questions, we can pull it up and answer very easily. The way payroll is laid out is very nice.
Invoicing is the same thing. We can match it to an order in detail, attach the order, which shows loading time, unloading time, who signed off on it. Everything is there in one nice little package. Before, the invoice was not generated from the order. There was nothing to tie it together. It was all manual. This has streamlined it quite nicely.
We can email the invoice directly from Axon to the client. Before we would have had to print the invoice, scan it, and email it individually. That’s been great.
Are you getting invoices out quicker than before?
Yes. Absolutely. Axon has sped up a number of processes for us. Manually writing out a BOL is time-consuming. In here I can email the BOL to the client rather than have a driver sit there and write one out.
As soon as the loads are done, they’ll send me a photo of it. I can upload it, scan it in, and send the invoice like that before the driver even returns to our yard. It’s sped up a number of processes and made things much easier.
Even payroll is the same. A number of drivers can be a little forgetful about handing in their timesheets. I can pull up the orders they were placed in as a driver, calculate their hours because it’s in there, and get it done before they even know it.
Did you used to lose or miss orders before Axon?
Oh, definitely. There have been times. When you’re doing things manually with multiple people handling them, there’s a chance you’ve got an order on your desk, you think you’ve done it, you put it away with the ones you have done, and in fact you didn’t. Before, you would not really know unless someone brought it to your attention.
With Axon, I can look at the screen and say, wait a minute, why is this one still sitting here as dispatched? It should be delivered. Where is that one? That’s quite nice. All the information is there. Nothing gets lost.
How do detailed driver statements help with your drivers?
Absolutely. Before they would receive a paper that showed hours and a wage on a date. Now they can actually see that on this date they went from Edmonton to Winnipeg and back, they got paid this much for it, then they did this.
It’s quite detailed, which absolutely helps them know they’re being compensated exactly for what they did and that there’s nothing missing.
How has reporting and day-to-day office workflow changed?
The reporting end of Axon is very detailed. Anything that we need to know, we’re able to pull from it quite easily. I like that the reports can be modified to take out information I don’t care about at that time and put what I need in a nice line, so I can grab what I’m looking for without searching through everything.
Financial reports, employee reports, order reports: it’s all right there. For the most part we utilize more of the historical reports of orders for certain purchase order numbers for our clients. Often they want to match their totals for that purchase order to what we have, so it’s nice to be able to pull just that information.
Being real-time software that each of us can access at any given time has really helped. We don’t have two or three people handling the same order in a confusing way, but there are different facets of it. I may make the order for the load. Nicole may put in the price. Maurice might look and say that trailer has to go in for a CVIP, so you can’t use that one.
Before, being all on paper, that sort of information was not readily available. A lot of transferring back and forth, a lot of movement, a lot of confusion. Perhaps some things get lost in the shuffle. Now all the information is there.
Could you grow the fleet without adding office staff?
A few years ago we started an LTL division with smaller two-ton trucks and gooseneck trailers. That brought on extra employees, which were easily managed through Axon. We’ve gotten rid of that division now.
We certainly could have more employees as we are now. Whether we have what we have now or we add ten more, it’s very easy to manage through Axon. From an office standpoint, if we had more employees, we would not have to add office staff. We’re easily managed as we are now.
If someone in the industry asked about your experience with Axon, what would you say?
I would say it’s been terrific so far. It’s very easy to use, very user-friendly. It’s streamlined a lot of our processes. I see the benefits of it for our operation, which is quite small, so I can only imagine what it would do for larger companies.
We’ve only scratched the surface. I see parts of it that if we were to grow, or just have the time to check out what this can do for us, I’m quite sure there would be much more benefit. I would not hesitate to recommend it at all. It’s a great program.
