McKinsey research into mid-mile and last-mile handovers found that waste created at blind handoffs between shippers, dispatchers, third-party logistics providers, and carriers accounts for between 6% and 13% of carrier revenue, with dwell time identified as a primary driver.
A handoff is also where commercial responsibility changes hands. When something goes wrong there, two organisations end up holding different accounts of the same event. What follows is what tracking data should settle, why most records cannot, and what evidence-grade tracking requires.
What asset tracking records
Asset tracking is the continuous recording of the location and status of goods, vehicles, or equipment, together with the events that occur to them.
The distinction that matters commercially is between location and event. Location answers where something was. An event answers what happened to it, when, and who was responsible at that moment. Only the second settles anything.
MIXMOVE frames the purpose accordingly. In a business relationship, tracking is not a convenience feature. It is the shared record that determines who absorbs the cost when a commitment is missed.
Why tracking became a commercial instrument
Tracking entered logistics as reassurance, answering where the shipment was for someone waiting on it.
Contract structures changed its function. Service level agreements with penalties, chargebacks for late or incomplete delivery, and detention charges all require a factual basis. Once money moves on the answer, the record stops being reassurance and becomes evidence.
Deloitte found that 66% of retail executives surveyed plan to restructure their supply chains if input costs rise, which introduces new partners and new service agreements into networks, each one requiring a basis for settling performance.
What actually damages a partnership
Late deliveries do not usually end commercial relationships. Operations people understand that networks fail sometimes.
What damages the relationship is the argument afterwards. One party believes the vehicle arrived at 14:00 and waited three hours. The other believes it arrived at 16:30 and waited thirty minutes. Both are working from their own records, neither can disprove the other, and the discussion resolves by seniority or by whoever has more commercial leverage.
That is corrosive in a way the original delay is not. It converts an operational problem into a question of trust, repeated monthly.
The four disputes tracking data should settle
Arrival and departure timing. The basis for detention and demurrage charges, and the most frequently contested figure in freight.
Dwell responsibility. Whether a vehicle waited because it arrived early or because the site could not receive it. These carry opposite commercial consequences.
Delivery completeness. Whether the consignment that departed matched the consignment that was committed. Completeness failures are invisible in position data and account for most chargebacks.
Condition at handover. Whether damage or a temperature deviation occurred before or after responsibility transferred.
Why most tracking records fail the test
Three reasons, and all are structural rather than technical.
The record is at the wrong level. Consignment-level tracking cannot answer a completeness dispute, because the argument is about individual lines.
The record is reconstructed. Where an event is logged at shift end rather than as it occurs, it carries the errors of memory and paperwork, and the other party knows it.
The record is one-sided. Each organisation holds its own version. Two internally consistent records that disagree do not settle anything; they formalise the disagreement.
Position history has a further limitation. It confirms a vehicle was somewhere. It does not confirm what it was carrying, how full it was, or what condition the goods were in, which is what three of the four disputes turn on.
The five properties of evidence-grade records
Item-level granularity. Recorded at the level the dispute occurs, which is the individual unit.
Captured at the moment of the event. Created as it happens, not assembled afterwards.
Timestamped and attributed. Every event carries a time and an accountable party.
Continuous across the handover. The transfer between organisations is recorded as an event rather than treated as a boundary where one record ends and another begins.
Available to both parties. A shared record removes the argument rather than winning it, which is the outcome that preserves the relationship.
What the evidence shows
McKinsey attributes between 6% and 13% of carrier revenue to waste at handover points, with dwell time named as a leading driver.
Deloitte reports that 30% of retailers surveyed use AI for supply chain visibility, expected to reach 41% within a year, with 59% anticipating positive return on investment within 12 months.
Across MIXMOVE deployments, hub operations have recorded up to 80% fewer errors, dwell time reductions of 40%, fill rate improvements of 10% to 20%, and up to 15% more billable output. The platform is in use across 35+ distribution companies in 20+ countries.
At 3M, a decade of collaboration produced a 90% truck fill rate, a 35% reduction in transport costs, and a 50% reduction in CO₂ emissions.
“By using the MIXMOVE software, 3M managed to reduce transport costs by 35% and CO₂ emissions by 50%.”
— Patrick Van De Vyver, Former Head of EMEA Logistics Operations, 3M
How MIXMOVE DI produces a shared record
MIXMOVE DI works across the accumulated record rather than the individual movement. It identifies where disputes cluster, which lanes and partners generate repeated exceptions, and which service failures share a cause, which turns a pile of settled arguments into a list of things worth fixing.
MIXMOVE HUB OS captures the same detail at the node, identifying freight at item level so that a completeness question has an answer at line level rather than at consignment level.
Because both parties work from the same execution record, the four disputes above stop being arguments and become lookups. The recorded 15% increase in billable output comes from the same mechanism: work that was performed and previously absorbed because nobody could evidence it.
Both operate alongside an existing TMS, WMS, or ERP as an orchestration layer, or as a standalone platform.
Partnerships rarely fail over a late delivery. They fail over two accounts of the same event that cannot be reconciled. Operations that capture events rather than positions stop having the argument.
Read the MIXMOVE DI overview to see how recurring dispute and exception patterns are identified across lanes and partners.
Frequently asked questions
What is asset tracking?
The continuous recording of the location and status of goods, vehicles, or equipment, together with the events that occur to them. Event records, rather than location records, are what settle commercial questions.
Can tracking data be used to settle service disputes?
Yes, where it is item-level, captured at the moment of the event, timestamped and attributed, continuous across handovers, and available to both parties. Records failing any of those conditions tend to formalise a disagreement rather than resolve it.
Why does position data not settle most disputes?
Because it confirms where a vehicle was without confirming what it carried, how full it was, or its condition. Three of the four most common disputes turn on those questions.
Which industries benefit most?
Any operation working to service level agreements with financial consequences, particularly third-party logistics, healthcare and pharmaceutical distribution, food and perishables, and multi-partner networks where responsibility changes hands repeatedly.
