The massive size of XPO's operations necessitated efficiency at scale.

XPO is one of North America's leading less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation providers. Headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, the company's coast-to-coast network delivers to 99% of U.S. zip codes and reaches Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean.

Given the size of XPO, finding ways to make their operations more efficient is a top priority for their company. "At XPO, we invest heavily in technology to help us innovate and find ways to deliver even better, faster service to our customers," said Mike Gardner, the company's Director of Safety. 

XPO has been investing for many years in proprietary technology that’s deployed across operations to increase efficiency and better serve customers. To drive even more efficiencies across inspections, asset utilization and maintenance, vehicle detention times, fuel consumption, hours of service (HOS) tracking, and other areas of their business, they looked to Samsara. Specifically, the team was looking for a comprehensive solution that offered an open, API-powered platform that would help them transform data into actionable insights.

XPO invested in a solution that was easy to implement and committed to growing with their needs.

The majority of XPO’s technology is proprietary and built in-house. While the company already had a legacy telematics solution in place, the team turned to Samsara based on the shared commitment that both companies have towards continuous innovation. "One of the big reasons we chose Samsara is because it's a tech-forward company that invests a lot into R&D," said Gardner. "Since day one, XPO has always made technology a priority, so partnering with Samsara made a lot of sense."

For the XPO team, Samsara also fit their needs at a practical level. As John Maher, Director of Fleet Maintenance, explained, "Samsara hardware is simple and smaller, and doesn’t take up a lot of real estate on a vehicle.” 

Overall, the XPO team has appreciated the Samsara team's commitment to developing solutions to their company's unique challenges. "The Samsara team has been a strong partner to us," said Greg Pawelski, Vice President of Health & Safety. "They are always willing to collaborate and ideate on how to prioritize the safety and efficiency of our business."

XPO drives significant efficiencies across tax savings, inspections, HOS compliance, and more.

After deploying Samsara, XPO has begun to realize meaningful efficiency gains, which are translating into cost savings. With Samsara location and mileage data, XPO anticipates receiving annual fuel tax refunds. "We're using Samsara to determine if our vehicles are on roads or private facilities and applying for off-highway fuel tax refunds, which is something we couldn't take advantage of before," said Lanny Gower, Senior Tax Manager. 

XPO has also implemented Samsara workflows to increase driver efficiency. "We saw a 99% decrease in unassigned miles week-over-week by using Samsara's start of shift workflow," said Tim Bean, Safety Training Manager. "Samsara workflows and dashboards have given us more visibility, so we can not only track miles more efficiently, but also be more effective coaching drivers."

Moreover, with the Samsara platform, XPO has been able to plug Samsara data into their network through their line haul models and other proprietary software, helping to drive additional efficiencies. One example is time savings on labor: "We estimate we're saving thousands of hours in technician labor by setting up an integration with Samsara and AssetWorks," said Bean. "It removes manual parts of tracking and streamlines maintenance for our technicians." 

In addition, Samsara has enabled XPO to switch from paper inspection forms to eDVIRs, saving thousands of hours per year. "Saving one minute on filling out an inspection form may not seem significant, but when you multiply that by three million trips per year, it's a huge amount," said Bean.

Looking forward, XPO plans to continue their rollout of Samara across their operations. "We have a whole list of initiatives we're working on, and we’re excited to make them a reality," said Gardner. "We expected to see improvements and gains with Samsara, and we're pleased that that's exactly what we've gotten."