Aviro360 Boosts Dwell Time Through Automated Yard Inventory

Aviro360 targets dwell time with automated yard inventory

Yard congestion and inaccurate equipment records can create delays long before a truck reaches the loading dock. Aviro360, a yard-technology company incubated by intermodal terminal operator ConGlobal, is attempting to address that problem by automating inventory checks and connecting physical yard activity with transportation and enterprise software.

The company says it is operating at more than 80 sites nationally and has booked business expected to take that total past 120 sites by the end of 2026. Ilhan Kolko, Aviro360’s president and managing director, told FreightWaves that the company expects to reach an estimated 200 sites in 2027.

Aviro360’s central argument is that yard data often becomes outdated before it reaches the systems operators use to plan work. Most facilities rely on a combination of transportation management systems, yard management systems, warehouse management systems, enterprise resource planning software, spreadsheets, cameras and manual processes. Those tools may each capture part of the operation, but they do not necessarily reflect what is happening on the ground in real time.

In many yards, inventory is still checked by an employee traveling through the facility with a clipboard. That check may occur once every four hours. By the time the results are entered into a system, containers, chassis and trailers may have been moved or rehandled several times.

“Someone went out there to take inventory of the yard, didn’t come back for four hours, and when they came back with a pen and paper it’s 75% accurate,” Kolko said. “It’s almost always 75% accurate, by the way, when it’s done manually.”

Aviro360 gave the example of a 6,000-container yard. The company says its automated system can cover that yard in less than an hour with 99% accuracy. A manual check, by comparison, would take about four hours and produce approximately 75% accuracy, according to the company.

For drivers, the effects of an inaccurate yard map can show up as wasted time at the gate, an unnecessary search for equipment or a spotter move that does not match the information in the system. A truck may be sent to the wrong location, or a trailer or chassis may not be where a dispatcher, yard employee or gate clerk expects it to be. Those delays can consume driving and appointment time while adding more work for yard personnel.

Aviro360 captures container and chassis numbers, license plates and company logos at the gate on inbound and outbound movements. It then tracks assets through the facility, including the door where an asset was handled, the parking location and the timing of each move. The company says this information is presented through a single operational view rather than requiring users to reconcile multiple data sources.

The system also is designed to work with existing TMS, YMS, WMS, ERP and security platforms. Aviro360’s approach is not to replace those systems, but to provide more current yard-level information for the software already in use. Gate transactions can update inventory, while equipment movements and security events are tied to the relevant assets and activities.

One area the company is pursuing is dwell time. The American Transportation Research Institute reported that drivers were detained during 39.3% of stops in 2023. ATRI estimated that detention cost for-hire trucking companies $3.6 billion in direct expenses and $11.5 billion in lost productivity that year.

Getting paid for detention can also be difficult. According to the figures cited by Aviro360, fleets billed for detention on 94.5% of applicable occasions but collected on fewer than half of those invoices. Accurate records of arrival times, equipment movements and departure times could help fleets document delays, although the company’s system does not by itself guarantee that a detention claim will be accepted or paid.

Aviro360 estimates that its technology can produce a return of more than $650,000 per year per site, based on an appearance on the “Let’s Talk Supply Chain” podcast. The company attributes the potential savings to improved yard efficiency and reduced dwell, but the figure is an estimate rather than an industrywide result.

Refrigerated operations are another target. Aviro360 integrates with trailer telematics and can flag units that are approaching the end of a temperature or dwell window, according to Kolko. ATRI found that refrigerated drivers experienced detention at 56.2% of stops in 2023, the highest rate among the equipment categories cited by the organization. Kolko said food and beverage customers have recently adopted the technology in part because of that use case.

The hardware includes gate equipment and mobile inventory units that can be mounted on yard tractors or other vehicles already moving around a facility. Aviro360 said its gate footprint has been reduced by 40% over the past 18 months. A ready site can be installed in two or three days, with a soft launch by the fifth day, while mobile inventory equipment can be installed the same day.

After installation, the company allows about four weeks for calibration and machine-learning models to adapt to the property. Aviro360 says parking spaces do not need to be painted or otherwise marked because the system uses geolocation to identify positions within a digital map of the yard. The company says accuracy reaches 99% by the end of the calibration period.

Aviro360 also says it can reuse some cameras, gate arms and fencing already installed by customers if the equipment meets its requirements. That could reduce the need for a second security installation at facilities that recently invested in other systems.

Kolko said yard labor is split roughly evenly across Aviro360’s customer base between in-house spotters and outside 3PL or carrier crews. The company says its integration process is intended to remain the same regardless of which organization operates the yard.

Aviro360’s technology has been in development for more than a decade, and the company said its two core products are in their third generation. Its broader view is that automated gate activity and inventory reconciliation will become common features over the next five years, with more advanced yard intelligence developing on top of that foundation.