C.H. Robinson has rolled out an Asset Management System (AMS) inside its Drop Trailer Plus program that aims to end the guesswork around where trailers are, how long they’ve been idle and when they’ll be available again. The technology—announced on October 13 and now live across Robinson’s trailer pool with expansion to contract carrier fleets underway—fuses GPS, telematics, geofences and facility mapping into one Navisphere-integrated control panel. That turns a 10,000‑trailer daily network into a fleet of connected assets that update as frequently as every five seconds. For a market where “drop and hook” represents nearly half of all truckload moves, the ability to see and steer idle time and equipment turns is more than a nice-to-have—it’s a margin lever.
FreightWaves reported the enhancement as a visibility and utilization play for drop programs, and the timing tracks with Robinson’s broader push to pair its brokerage scale with asset-level data. The company says AMS will cut “yard hunts,” help right-size trailer pools across locations, and surface dwell breaches via automated alerts—signals that typically drive detention charges, missed appointments and overtime downstream. Facilities get scorecards by lane, site or carrier, while shippers and carriers get one version of the truth on trailer status—at rest or in motion—without stitching together spreadsheets and one-off trackers.
What’s new here isn’t just another dot on a map. By unifying trailer telemetry and inventory context in a single platform, Robinson is trying to solve the classic drop-trailer paradox: the very flexibility that makes drop attractive also makes it hard to police utilization. If the AMS can reliably flag idle assets, late departures and empty-but-blocked doors, fleet managers can rebalance pools faster, reclaim yard space and recover turns that get lost to manual follow-ups. That’s the difference between a trailer network that absorbs volume swings and one that amplifies them. DC Velocity framed the move as turning the company’s drop fleet into “intelligent assets,” underscoring the operational shift from tracking to control.
Scale matters when you wire up a system like this. Robinson moves more than 800,000 drop shipments annually and has over 10,000 trailers in circulation daily. Those numbers give the AMS a large signal set and, critically, the opportunity to extend visibility beyond Robinson-owned equipment to “several contract carrier fleets,” with more coming in 2026. For shippers accustomed to fragmented experiences across providers, pulling that coverage into one pane of glass could reduce blind spots when loads change hands or sit at a facility longer than planned.
The practical upside for operations leaders is straightforward. Real-time status and exception alerts can prevent dwell from turning into detention. Location-certain assets reduce labor spent on yard checks. Accurate ETAs lower the need for manual check calls and help appointment schedulers protect dock capacity. And with theft and fraud top-of-mind, tighter visibility over both trailers and the freight loaded in them offers an added security layer. Each of these outcomes ties back to utilization: the faster you convert a trailer from “idle” to “en route,” the more capacity you generate without adding equipment. Container News’ coverage highlighted those points, with an emphasis on speed-to-decision and security.
There are competitive implications, too. Drop programs have long been the domain of asset carriers who could leverage their own telematics and shop networks to keep equipment cycling. Robinson’s AMS is an attempt by a non-asset giant to narrow that gap with software and data—at a moment when shippers are asking providers to flex capacity up or down without adding complexity. If Robinson can maintain data quality across external carrier fleets and facility geofences, the AMS could become a wedge into more managed drop programs and longer-term commitments. Business Wire-distributed materials and multiple trade outlets echoed that the initiative is designed to provide “capacity, clarity and control” in a single platform—a pitch aimed squarely at procurement and operations teams tasked with doing more with fewer people.
What to watch next: adoption at multi-shipper campuses and high-velocity consumer nodes ahead of peak season, where drop programs are both most valuable and most chaotic. Robinson says AMS is already active across its own pool with further onboarding of contract carriers through 2026. The speed at which carriers connect their trailers—and how consistently facilities honor geofences and dwell rules—will determine whether the promised utilization gains show up on P&L statements in the form of lower detention, better turns and fewer expedites.
Sources: FreightWaves, C.H. Robinson, DC Velocity, Container News
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