Baton Announces Launch of World's First AI-Powered Local Fleet, Surpassing All Previously-Seen Industry Levels of Transparency, Efficiency, Planning, and Profit

Marks the Necessity of Technology to Meet Obstacles of the Current Global Supply Chain Shift

SAN FRANCISCO, April 28, 2022 -- Today, Baton announced that it is launching the world's first AI-powered, local, digital fleet in the Los Angeles region.  Its proprietary technology is introducing an unprecedented and transformational level of efficiency into the industry, passing the reliability and savings on to shippers and fuel-price-insulated profits on to owner-operators.

For the last two years, Baton has been a first and last-mile solution for long-haul carriers on their most challenging freight.  Over the course of that time, Baton gathered data and perfected a technology solution that now enables the company to execute seamlessly and with an industry-shifting level of productivity in any local environment. Baton is using this software to expand to support every type of local freight move–serving shippers, intermodal and broker freight.

The new software behind Baton's local fleet is a load-planning tool that uses AI to match loads with drivers, adjusting to ever-changing conditions in real-time.  It is able to offer predictions on traffic and warehouse patterns and use those predictions to adapt around obstacles and has the ability to optimize driver schedules and easily modify them. For shippers, it plugs in seamlessly to their existing platforms via API and provides them with access and transparency, which is becoming increasingly critical with a shifting global supply chain.

"Baton's software allows us to plan owner-operator driver schedules more efficiently, a much-needed solution for drivers trying to make ends meet with equipment and fuel costs on the rise," said Baton Co-founder Andrew Berberick. "We've entered a freight recession where rates on the spot market have declined rapidly and volume is scarce, so Baton is offering drivers a way to earn more."

Baton's software has already achieved demonstrably exceptional results. It has led to higher load acceptance (2x industry acreage), better service performance (98.3% 0s grace on 20k loads) and lower costs for shippers (dwell times reduced by 39%).

"The schedule-optimization technology we've built is just the tip of the iceberg. One of the core innovations I'm proud of is how we architected our underlying model to represent freight on such a granular level that we can easily apply optimization solutions to virtually any type of freight use-case, whether that's local truckload or event LTL, parcel, etc.," said Baton Lead Backend Engineer Ryan Houlihan, who prior to Baton, developed innovative machine learning systems at NASA, Apple, Kinema Systems (acquired by Boston Dynamics) and Stanford.

Baton plans to expand its local digital fleet to the Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Phoenix regions in the near future.  Baton was founded in October 2019. 

SOURCE Baton