Ninety-two per cent of supply chain professionals say a yard management system would add value. Twenty-five per cent have one. Part of the reason is a project everybody assumes is bigger than it is.
When FourKites surveyed 375 supply chain professionals at Fortune 500 companies for its 2021 State of Yard Management report, 92% said a yard management system would add value. Only 25% had one. These are some of the largest supply chains in the world.
Five years on, little has shifted. C3 Solutions’ 2026 State of Dock and Yard Management survey found almost 73% of operations exploring dock and yard automation, but only 12.9% with a defined plan, down from 19.4% the year before. Appetite is up. Adoption is going backwards.
Walk into a mid-sized UK yard and it’s starker still. The gatehouse works off a printed list, the shunters work off a radio, and the person who knows where everything is parked is the system.
That isn’t for want of software. Yard management systems have existed for years, built for large, complex operations and sold as full-suite platforms with integration projects measured in quarters. For a site turning a few hundred trailers a week the maths never worked, and that history set an expectation which has outlived it.
The consequences are familiar. Hauliers wait at the gate and price the delay into next year’s rates. Drivers burn tacho time sitting still. When a carrier disputes a waiting time three weeks later, there’s no record either way.
“Ninety-two per cent see the value and a quarter have the software,” says Jim Wardlaw, co-founder of YardOps. “A lot of that gap is expectation. People hear ‘yard management system’ and think WMS or TMS: a twelve-month programme, an integration bill and a board paper. A yard doesn’t need any of that. Take the modules you need and you can be running inside a month.”
The technology stopped being the obstacle some time ago. The expectation is what’s left.
Image credit: nblxer via Envato Elements
