Business Challenge
Highway operates a freight technology platform providing Carrier Identity® verification, trust, and fraud prevention across broker-carrier transactions. To enhance its core platform, Highway needed a robust track-and-trace solution to give freight brokers real-time visibility, route overviews, and accurate ETAs from pickup to delivery, built on truck-safe, compliant routes.
However, scaling these capabilities came with real financial and technical considerations.. Highway was utilizing high-tier Google Maps Platform SKUs, such as the Place Details API (Enterprise), driving up cost per call without fully optimizing location precision for commercial vehicles. To bring these capabilities to customers at scale, Highway set out to optimize its mapping architecture, reduce API spend, improve location data quality, and leverage newly released Google capabilities, including Large Vehicle Routing (LVR), to deliver truck-safe, compliant routes and more accurate ETAs.
Benefits
- Cost Optimization & Predictability: Transitioned from high-tier legacy SKUs (such as Place Details) to the newly released Search Destinations endpoint of the lower-cost Geocoding API, significantly reducing unit costs and making large-scale vehicle routing economically viable.
- Cleaner Location Data: Improved address data quality across shipping and receiving points by using Google address validation tools to capture key commercial details like building entrances and parking zones.
- Enhanced End-User Product Value: Leveraged Google’s newly released Large Vehicle Routing capabilities to support truck-safe, compliant routing, more accurate ETAs, and a more competitive track-and-trace offering.
“Woolpert’s ability to optimize our processes was fantastic. They knew exactly at what scale we were using our SKUs and had great guidance on how to rebalance that usage. It was super helpful to optimize that process, reduce costs, and make LVR a viable solution for us.”
- Jordan Newton, Director of Product, Highway
Working With Woolpert
Woolpert supported Highway as a strategic Google Maps Platform partner with deep expertise in location-based logistics. Woolpert audited Highway’s API usage, identifying opportunities to reduce costs and improve location data. This work also prepared Highway to leverage Google’s newly released Large Vehicle Routing dataset, bringing Highway, Woolpert, and Google together to incorporate this new capability into Highway’s track-and-trace offering.
The Solution
Woolpert made it possible: routing and ETAs in Highway are now powered by Google. Highway integrated an optimized Google Maps Platform architecture into its core platform to power its track-and-trace solution. Utilizing Google’s Address Validation and Search Destinations APIs, Highway cleanses shipping and receiving data at entry and fetches precise location insights required for commercial freight navigation.
This backend setup enables Highway to calculate accurate truck routes, continuously update ETAs, and generate automated service failure notifications. By pairing Google’s location intelligence with Woolpert’s optimization guidance, Highway established a cost-efficient baseline to power its expanding tracking capabilities.
