Every hour a reefer truck spends queuing eats into shelf life, especially for fresh goods with a short best-before window. Meanwhile the refrigeration unit idles on diesel, adding cost and emissions. With scheduled dock slots you spread arrivals, cut waiting times and log every step with timestamps that hold up in audits and detention disputes.
Eight patterns that cost money and create risk at food producers and wholesalers without scheduled dock slots.
The cold chain must stay unbroken and every receipt must be documented with time and temperature. The longer the queue at the receiving dock, the greater the risk of exceeding the limit before goods reach cold storage: doors left open at the dock, units switched off to save fuel. The result is deviation reports and discarded goods.
Every minute one of your own trucks waits at the dock is lost driving time. That holds whether you run ten trucks or a hundred. The same goes for external carriers: their waiting time lands as costs on you.
Every fresh-goods delivery wants in before 10 am. The rest of the day the dock stands empty. Staffing has to cover the peak, and in the afternoon you pay for overcapacity.
Drivers who have queued for a long time want to leave fast, and in the rush your hygiene and safety rules get missed: protective clothing, zones they may not enter, no smoking. When communication also happens in a language the driver does not master, you get conflict at the desk and a finding in the next audit.
Hauliers bill for waiting time, but you have no timestamps to challenge the invoices with. Without documentation it is word against word, and the cost lands on you.
Electric reefer trucks need to charge between routes. If docks with charging are not visible in the booking, charging becomes yet another stop that eats time and range.
If the truck arrives after goods receiving has closed, the goods are received the next day, and the retail chains' minimum remaining shelf life requirements become harder to meet. The same applies outbound: a truck loaded late misses its slot at the chain's distribution centre, and the next chance is tomorrow.
Which carrier unloaded which order, when and at which door? BRC, IFS and FSSC 22000 require documented goods receipt checks, and the auditor wants to see the records. Today they sit in notebooks and email threads.
Two products in one system: Flow Management handles booking and flow, Arrival Management handles arrival, from check-in to completion.
Define your goods types, for example frozen, chilled and ambient, and which doors may receive them. Set a cap on how much can be booked per hour for the whole site or for a group of doors. Bookings outside the rules are stopped in the portal, and staff are warned if a truck is called to the wrong door.
The driver checks in on a tablet or computer on arrival: the booking code or order number is matched to the booking, the mobile number is verified with an SMS code, and your hygiene and safety rules are displayed and acknowledged with a timestamp, all AI-translated into the driver's language. Staff call in the next truck via SMS when the door is free. No queue at the desk, no waiting with the engine running.
Arrived, at door, unloading complete: every status is logged with the exact time and who recorded it. You keep doing temperature checks as today; Dockai provides the timestamps showing how long the goods sat at the dock. In a detention dispute you have evidence per booking and carrier, and in an audit you show the chain without digging through binders.
Punctuality, time at door and detention minutes per carrier, week by week. When freight contracts come up for renegotiation you have figures showing who keeps time and who disrupts the flow.
When arrivals are spread across the day, staffing can be planned on real volume. The schedule shows the whole day per door, recurring deliveries are entered once, and outbound loadings are booked the same way so trucks leave on time for the chains' distribution centres.
Mark which docks have charging, with connector type and power, so electric trucks can be booked there and charge while they unload or load.
The same system, rules and follow-up across several sites, even in different countries. Dockai runs today at warehouses in Sweden and factories across Europe.
Even flow instead of staffing for the worst hour. Existing customers report up to 20% lower staffing needs.
Every arrival, waiting time and deviation is logged per carrier and booking.
Carriers book themselves. The hours spent on email and phone are freed up.
Yes. An unbooked truck gets a booking created by staff directly in the schedule, where there is a gap, and then checks in like everyone else. Over time the share of booked deliveries tends to rise on its own, because booked trucks are received faster.
Yes. You define the goods types yourself, and each door gets rules for which ones may be booked there. Frozen trucks go to the frozen door, chilled to the chilled door, and you avoid clashes.
No. You measure and document the temperature at receipt as today, in your own procedures or quality system. Dockai provides the timestamps around it: when the truck arrived, when unloading started and when it finished. Together they show whether the goods sat too long before reaching cold storage.
Dockai manages the meeting between carrier and loading dock. Your ERP or WMS manages what happens inside the warehouse. The systems complement each other and can be connected via API when you want, but Dockai delivers full effect standalone. Read more in the dock scheduling guide.
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