Bob Stemple, co-founder and president, Motorcity Systems

“What drives you?” This introspective question is one you might have asked yourself, or your employees, colleagues and vendors to better understand their motivations and create alignment with the goals of your organization.

The question is especially relevant in the transportation and logistics industry. Assets are driven by people, but everyone must be driven – the driver, office support staff and vendors – by the same core principles to keep the lights on and wheels turning.

Let’s start with myself. What drives my work is a passion for solving challenges and creating opportunities in the transportation industry. My career started at a motor carrier where I gained first-hand experience of how to solve unique technology and operational challenges with transportation management software (TMS).

Before long, I became aware that TMS systems couldn’t do everything we needed them to do. This caused me to create workaround approaches and gain insights on how new and different solutions could (and should) work together to improve operational efficiency and visibility.

One of the recurring problems of working with TMS systems is having no common language standards for how they communicate with external third party applications. nor having a standard approach for how to use them to manage assets and drivers. Based on my experience as a user, keeping track of trailers and balancing pools at customer locations, for example, was largely a manual process assisted with spreadsheets. 

The knowledge and capabilities gap I encountered with TMS systems inspired me to learn more about third-party solutions and how they can integrate with and enhance the core systems. Through this process, I came to realize that many TMS systems had plateaued in terms of innovation. In addition, integration with third-party solutions became too difficult or in some cases impossible to do. This made it extremely challenging to manage and upgrade the software as needed.

It soon became clear to me that the best path forward – one that would make a positive impact on the transportation industry – was if TMS systems and solutions, old and new, could be more easily connected to share data. This motivated me to found Motorcity Systems in 2017 with a group of experienced industry professionals.  

A passion for solving today’s problems for the transportation industry 

No carrier should have to experience a lack of visibility or operational delays from their solution providers. That’s why I believe in partnerships – in businesses supporting businesses – to ultimately make the lives easier for the end customer and user.

Our approach at Motorcity Systems is to create simple, straightforward, and effective solutions for our customers to support their business needs. We partner directly with third-party providers and integrate their systems with our cloud-based platform, which gives carriers access to the best and brightest solutions available for TMS and mobile fleet management systems.

Our team of experts understand the nuances of each major software system. This strategy ensures that we build integrations that ultimately allow for an “a la carte” menu of options. Our cloud-based integration platform has built-in connections with legacy TMS systems and third-party software to provide a ready-made solution to best suits the needs of each and every customer, today and for the years to follow.

Besides creating integrations, Motorcity develops new applications to address specific pain points in the industry, such as the need for faster and more integrated dispatch-driver communication systems than what has been available from legacy TMS and fleet telematics providers.

Expanding the ecosystem of integrated applications and creating new products for motor carriers is what drives me and others at Motorcity Systems. We know many companies have the same challenges that we encountered as first-hand users. Our professional fulfillment comes from providing solutions to customers that deliver rapid ROI and create enduring value.

For more information about Motorcity Systems’ network of integration partners or to schedule a demo of our cloud-based TORQUE integration platform and RELAY dispatch-driver messaging system, visit:
https://motorcity.systems/contact/