Every year for the holidays, drivers deliver millions of packages and gifts to warehouses, retailers, and homes. What many of us don’t realize is that there’s an entire universe of “invisible data” working behind the scenes to help these drivers—and in many cases, Samsara customers—get deliveries from point A to point B. 

Since joining Samsara a few months ago, I’ve been amazed not just by the sheer volume of data we process each day, but by the impact that data has on our day-to-day lives. Samsara is positioned to surface actionable insights from all aspects of a company’s physical operations—from vehicles to equipment to warehousing—and these insights have a tangible impact, in dollars saved, accidents prevented, and assets better utilized.  

To pull back the curtain on how this impact translates to the holiday season, I thought it would be fun to follow a gift box, from packaging, to transport, to dock, through the lens of one of our customers, Logistics Warehouse. If you’ve ever sent a gift box with cosmetics or high-end spirits, there’s a good chance Logistics Warehouse packaged it in one of its 600,000 square feet of warehousing space. For this journey, let’s imagine a gift box of high-end tequila and glassware. 

Stop 1: Our gift is assembled and the data point begins its journey 

The components of our gift set—glasses, bottle, packaging—all must arrive and be tracked at Logistics Warehouse. From there, Samsara Site Visibility cameras monitor the repacking line as team members assemble our gift box. With the ability to remotely capture this video footage, Logistics Warehouse can set alerts for safety detections or inactivity and get a more accurate, automated sense of workforce productivity. This enables their team to reduce downtime during the notoriously busy holiday season. 

“Our repack division gets going a few months before the holidays so we can ship out the products to retailers between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Chris Morland, Director of Operations for Logistics Warehouse. “We have Samsara cameras monitoring our repack lines, our warehouses, and providing site security. Live video feeds help us track throughput, even from several states away.”

Stop 2: The data point integrates for a more streamlined pickup 

Logistics Warehouse uses Samsara across its entire physical operations, from Site Visibility in their warehouses to Vehicle Gateways and AI Dash Cams in their vehicle fleet. Because of this, they’re able to take full advantage of the end-to-end insights our platform can provide. This stage of our gift’s journey illustrates that. Once our gift is packed and ready, it waits to be assigned to a driver for dispatch. This is when Logistics Warehouse leverages our integration with McLeod Loadmaster, one of over 200 partner integrations available on the Samsara App Marketplace.  

McLeod Loadmaster is a dispatch management system used by thousands of fleets across the industry. Logistics Warehouse is one of those fleets, using Loadmaster to manage and track loads that are ready to be picked up for distribution. At the same time, Logistics Warehouse drivers in the field have our Vehicle Gateways tracking real-time GPS location and our Driver App logging hours of service. 

The magic happens when we’re able to pull all of this data together to streamline disparate parts of physical operations. By integrating hours of service and location data from Samsara into Loadmaster, Logistics Warehouse dispatchers can more efficiently match loads—like the one with our gift box—to nearby drivers with available hours. Once a driver is assigned, it’s time for our gift to hit the road.

Stop 3: The data point prepares the driver to hit the road

The assigned driver then continues their shift with automated workflows in the Samsara Driver App. They run a vehicle inspection, review the day’s planned route, and update their hours of service. With that, our package is on its way.  

Once the truck is moving, our Vehicle Gateway collects, logs, and stores the location data of our gift directly on the device. It then pings that information to the cloud in real time. This is where our data point becomes truly actionable.

Stop 4: The data point becomes actionable as it enters the cloud 

Once our gift is en route, to-the-second GPS location data is sent from a Vehicle Gateway to the cloud. This location data in the cloud is what powers some of our most popular features, like Helicopter View, where customers can see a real-time aerial view of any given vehicle or trailer overlaid on the map of its route.  

It’s especially impactful when location data is integrated and analyzed alongside additional data points, such as routing and navigation information. This can be used to send a real-time ETA link to clients directly from the Samsara Dashboard, keeping all parties informed and elevating the customer experience with a level of accuracy and visibility that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. 

“We send the customer the link so they can watch the triangle icon traveling across the map while the truck travels down the road,” said Morland of Logistics Warehouse. “They can see where the truck is, when it should arrive, and once the delivery is made.”

Stop 5: Big data platform connects the data point for greater impact

But the value of our location data point doesn’t stop there. In our big data platform, a single location data point can be aggregated, anonymized, and analyzed alongside trillions of other data points across our customer base, all in a matter of minutes. In the case of our gift box, we might want to examine which time of day routes are most delayed and plan for the holiday rush accordingly. 

These large-scale datasets are often split into cohorts based on different variables (e.g., fleet size, industry, vehicle type, or location) and from there, we can uncover relevant trends and learnings. Sometimes, these lessons actually turn into new offerings, such as the Fleet Benchmarks Report. Access to these industry benchmarks allows customers to see the big picture, which is key to contextualizing and understanding their own performance data.  

Samsara’s big data platform is a critical and differentiated stop on this journey, one that enables us to efficiently analyze massive volumes of data for added customer benefit.

Stop 6: The data point ends its journey back on the device 

With the help of this big data platform, our single location data point is backed by powerful contextual insights. Now we know our gift is en route, the retailer is getting real-time updates, and the operations team has the data needed to maximize on-time delivery. Once our package has reached its final destination, this location data point wraps up its journey back on the driver’s mobile device. 

Remember those start-of-day workflows? A Logistics Warehouse driver can now close those out and use the Samsara Driver App to take photos and capture electronic signatures for proof of delivery. This mobile app data is correlated with time and location data from the Vehicle Gateway as well. As a final step, data is synced and stored once again in the cloud via the Samsara Dashboard for fleet managers to access.

Final stop: Appreciating the invisible work this season 

This is just one of the billions of “invisible” data points flowing through Samsara every day. As I reflect on this journey, I’m reminded of the scale of our real-world impact and how critical these insights are to the success of our holiday supply chain. 

When you’re opening gifts with your family this season, think of how many people had a hand in moving almost every item there from manufacturing to your home. For our gift box, the bottle and glasses started as sand and silica trucked to the glass manufacturer. The molded glass containers were carried to the distillery for filling. The packaged bottles were shipped to a transportation and logistics company, such as Logistics Warehouse, to be combined with other items in the gift box. Then that package is shipped to the retailer, and ultimately to your home. There’s an amazing amount of behind-the-scenes work to get that gift to your door at a reasonable price, and a lot of people working around the clock to make it happen. 

Those people are the ones I really see Samsara helping every day. If we use data to help train employees to be safe, streamline their daily workflows, and keep our supply chains moving, that’s a great gift for us all.