YardFlow Research · Company-agnostic framework

Your yard doesn’t have 15 problems.
It has one systems problem.

Transportation is orchestrated between facilities. Warehousing is orchestrated inside them. The physical handoff between the two is often governed by local procedure. The symptoms look unrelated. The causes frequently are not.

Version 1.0Published September 23, 2026No product recommendations in the diagnostic.Publisher disclosure

Three downstream symptoms in third-party numbers: what a truck costs to run, what theft took, how often drivers wait.

ATRI · 2025 data · industry average

$2.336

per mile to run a truck, a 2025 record

ATRI, 2025 data, published Jul 2026 ↗

Verisk CargoNet · 2025 data · US and Canada

$725M

estimated cargo theft losses, 2025

Verisk CargoNet, 2025 data, published Jan 2026 ↗

ATRI · 2023 data · driver-reported

39.3%

of stops, driver-reported detention

ATRI, 2023 data, published Sep 2024 ↗

Open the diagnostic

The causal spine

Symptoms multiply downstream. Start upstream.

A trailer search, a late door, an extra spotter move and a detention invoice can be separate incidents. They can also be downstream expressions of the same missing operating capabilities. The map is built to test that hypothesis, not assume it.

Fig. 01 / The causal hypothesis

The atlas

15 recurring failure modes. Four questions for each.

Open any card to follow the full PICS chain: Problem, Impact, Cause to investigate, Solution requirement (shown as the required capability). Evidence links sit beside the claims they contextualize so the framework can be argued with rather than simply accepted.

15 of 15 shown

01Flow

Gate-to-gate time is long and unpredictable

Standard work
Orchestration

Open PICS →

02Flow

Yard moves are dispatched reactively

Shared state
Orchestration

Open PICS →

03State

Nobody continuously trusts the yard inventory

Shared state
Proof

Open PICS →

04State

Appointment plans, arrivals and dock reality drift apart

Shared state
Orchestration

Open PICS →

05Handoffs

Drivers face a different process at every site

Standard work
Network governance

Open PICS →

06Handoffs

The transportation-to-warehouse handoff has no data owner

Shared state
Network governance

Open PICS →

07Network

Local optimization hides network variability

Proof
Network governance

Open PICS →

08Network

Trailer pools and empties are out of balance across sites

Shared state
Network governance

Open PICS →

09Risk

The visit cannot be reconstructed cleanly

Proof
Shared state

Open PICS →

10Risk

Identity and authorization are inconsistently verified

Standard work
Network governance

Open PICS →

11Risk

Yard safety exposure is managed by habit

Standard work
Automation readiness

Open PICS →

12Economics

Detention is discovered after it is expensive

Orchestration
Proof

Open PICS →

13Economics

Growth is treated as a capacity-buying problem

Orchestration
Standard work

Open PICS →

14Economics

The economics of the yards remain fuzzy

Proof
Network governance

Open PICS →

15Automation

Automation arrives before the process is deterministic

Shared state
Standard work
Automation readiness

Open PICS →

The map

Fifteen failure modes. Six capabilities.

Every row on the left touches the capabilities it needs on the right. Follow a row across to see which capability keeps showing up; open a row to read its full PICS chain.

Scroll sideways →

Fig. 02 / The map: fifteen failure modes, six capabilities

Full matrix

One page of questions worth asking.

The compact working version for workshops, discovery and executive review.

#	Problem	Impact	Cause to investigate	Required capability
01	Gate-to-gate cycle time is long and unpredictable.	Fewer turns, driver detention, carrier friction, overtime, missed appointments and less usable transportation and production capacity.	Investigate whether check-in, verification, paperwork, routing and exceptions depend on sequential manual handoffs.	A coordinated arrival-to-departure flow in which routine visits execute consistently and people manage exceptions.
02	Yard moves are dispatched reactively.	Too many moves, extra mileage, higher spotter labor, longer dwell and slower door turns.	Investigate whether move requests arrive through radios, calls, spreadsheets or local queues without complete context or shared prioritization.	A prioritized move queue that assigns work and confirms completion.
03	Nobody has a continuously trustworthy picture of what is actually in the yard.	Spotters search, docks wait on trailers, unnecessary moves accumulate and asset utilization degrades.	Investigate whether periodic yard checks, disconnected sensors, radio updates and manual transactions let digital state drift from physical reality.	A continuously reconciled asset state in which physical events update digital truth as work happens.
04	Appointment plans, arrivals and dock reality drift apart.	Doors sit empty while usable trailers wait elsewhere, loading teams lose productive time and congestion grows.	Investigate whether schedules describe what should happen while arrivals, no-shows, load readiness, door availability and priorities change continuously.	Door and trailer sequencing driven by current operational state, not by a static appointment plan alone.
05	Drivers experience a different operating process at every facility.	Slower check-in, more mistakes, inconsistent service, training burden and avoidable congestion.	Investigate whether sites independently design forms, gate rules, instructions, paperwork and exception handling.	A standardized driver-facing check-in, instruction and exception process across facilities, with explicit, governed local exceptions.
06	The handoff between transportation and warehouse execution has no data owner.	Transportation and warehouse plans break at the physical handoff, ETAs lose value and failures are hard to trace back to a cause.	Investigate whether no single operating layer continuously owns every gate, trailer, move, door, document and departure event.	A shared operational event model with common identities, timestamps and interfaces across transportation, yard and warehouse systems.
07	Every facility develops its own operating playbook, and local optimization hides network-wide variability.	Leadership cannot reliably distinguish efficient sites from sites masking problems, improvements remain local and new-site rollouts become bespoke projects.	Investigate whether processes evolve around local people, layouts, legacy systems and tribal knowledge, so sites measure dwell, utilization, moves and turns differently, often from incomplete data.	Common workflows, event definitions, controls and metrics across the network, normalized so equivalent workflows can be compared across facilities, with configuration only where operations truly differ.
08	Trailer pools and empties are out of balance across sites.	Loads wait on equipment at one site while empties accumulate at another, repositioning miles rise and carriers are asked for trailers the network already owns.	Investigate whether each site manages its pool from a local count, and whether pool targets, empty returns and repositioning are decided without a shared network view.	Network-level pool targets and a shared, current count of trailers and empties by site, so repositioning is decided from the network’s state rather than each site’s.
09	Facilities cannot always reconstruct exactly what happened during a visit.	Detention disputes, claims, chargebacks, audit work, billing delays and cross-party finger-pointing. ATRI reports that 94.5% of fleets charge detention fees and are paid on fewer than half of those invoices.	Investigate whether gate logs, paperwork, seal checks, timestamps and operational actions live in separate systems or manual records.	A timestamped record of the visit that links identity, equipment, load, location, documents and handoffs.
10	Driver, carrier, equipment and load authorization can be inconsistently verified.	Cargo fraud, theft exposure, unauthorized access, claims and physical-security risk. Confirmed cargo thefts in the United States and Canada rose 18% in 2025, and about 30% of US incidents were strategic or fraud-driven, the kind a verification step exists to catch.	Investigate whether manual gate processes and fragmented appointment, identity and shipment data make verification inconsistent at scale.	Verification of the relevant identities and authorizations against expected records, with anomalies routed into controlled exception workflows.
11	Yard safety exposure is managed by habit rather than by a defined, observable process.	Pedestrian and yard truck conflicts, trailer creep, missed dock locks, near-misses that go unrecorded and incident exposure that varies by shift and site.	Investigate whether safety rules for moves, dock locks, wheel chocks and pedestrian zones live in tribal knowledge and are enforced differently by shift, site and supervisor.	Safety-critical steps built into the standard move and dock workflow and confirmed as part of execution, not remembered by the person doing the work.
12	Detention is often discovered after it has already become expensive.	Accessorial cost, lost driver hours, carrier dissatisfaction, service degradation and higher effective transportation cost. ATRI found detained trucks drove 14.6% faster on average afterward, so the cost is not only financial. With truckload operating margins below 1% in 2025, an unpaid detention invoice is the carrier’s margin.	Investigate whether the milestone chain is incomplete or delayed, so teams cannot see where dwell is accumulating or who owns the next action.	Continuous dwell measurement that exposes the controlling constraint and escalates before agreed thresholds are crossed.
13	Sites report they are out of doors, trailers or people while door and trailer utilization is low, unmeasured or defined differently by site.	Capital and headcount added before the constraint is known, margin compression, and capacity requests that cannot be tested.	Investigate whether the network adds physical capacity before quantifying time lost to waiting, searching, sequencing and coordination.	Utilization and time lost per door, trailer, spotter and operating hour measured consistently, so a capacity request can be tested against recoverable time before capital is added.
14	Organizations cannot confidently quantify the economics of their yards.	Projects compete on features, the wrong sites receive investment and executive sponsorship weakens. The industry-average cost to run a truck reached a record $2.336 per mile in 2025, so unmeasured time in the yards is priced higher than it was a year ago.	Investigate whether gate, dwell, move, labor, turn and exception data are incomplete or defined differently by facility.	Common definitions and before-and-after measurement that tie operating change to labor, transportation, capacity, risk and capital economics.
15	Automation is purchased before the underlying operating process is deterministic.	Pilots remain narrow, exceptions fall back to humans, integrations multiply, time-to-value stretches and scaled returns become harder to reproduce.	Investigate whether processes differ by site, operating state is incomplete and people compensate for undocumented exceptions that automation would have to inherit.	Ground truth and a standard digital workflow established before physical execution is automated.

01Gate-to-gate time is long and unpredictableFlow

Problem

Gate-to-gate cycle time is long and unpredictable.

Impact

Fewer turns, driver detention, carrier friction, overtime, missed appointments and less usable transportation and production capacity.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether check-in, verification, paperwork, routing and exceptions depend on sequential manual handoffs.

Required capability

A coordinated arrival-to-departure flow in which routine visits execute consistently and people manage exceptions.

Evidence / contextATRI · 2023 data · published Sep 2024 FMCSA · In progress · findings not yet published

02Yard moves are dispatched reactivelyFlow

Problem

Yard moves are dispatched reactively.

Impact

Too many moves, extra mileage, higher spotter labor, longer dwell and slower door turns.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether move requests arrive through radios, calls, spreadsheets or local queues without complete context or shared prioritization.

Required capability

A prioritized move queue that assigns work and confirms completion.

Evidence / contextGartner Peer Insights · Current · market definition only FreightWaves · Feb 2026

03Nobody continuously trusts the yard inventoryState

Problem

Nobody has a continuously trustworthy picture of what is actually in the yard.

Impact

Spotters search, docks wait on trailers, unnecessary moves accumulate and asset utilization degrades.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether periodic yard checks, disconnected sensors, radio updates and manual transactions let digital state drift from physical reality.

Required capability

A continuously reconciled asset state in which physical events update digital truth as work happens.

Evidence / contextFreightWaves · Feb 2026 Inbound Logistics · Jan 2026 · vendor-authored guidance

04Appointment plans, arrivals and dock reality drift apartState

Problem

Appointment plans, arrivals and dock reality drift apart.

Impact

Doors sit empty while usable trailers wait elsewhere, loading teams lose productive time and congestion grows.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether schedules describe what should happen while arrivals, no-shows, load readiness, door availability and priorities change continuously.

Required capability

Door and trailer sequencing driven by current operational state, not by a static appointment plan alone.

Evidence / contextGartner Peer Insights · Current · market definition only FreightWaves · Feb 2026

05Drivers face a different process at every siteHandoffs

Problem

Drivers experience a different operating process at every facility.

Impact

Slower check-in, more mistakes, inconsistent service, training burden and avoidable congestion.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether sites independently design forms, gate rules, instructions, paperwork and exception handling.

Required capability

A standardized driver-facing check-in, instruction and exception process across facilities, with explicit, governed local exceptions.

Evidence / contextInbound Logistics · Jan 2026 · vendor-authored guidance

06The transportation-to-warehouse handoff has no data ownerHandoffs

Problem

The handoff between transportation and warehouse execution has no data owner.

Impact

Transportation and warehouse plans break at the physical handoff, ETAs lose value and failures are hard to trace back to a cause.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether no single operating layer continuously owns every gate, trailer, move, door, document and departure event.

Required capability

A shared operational event model with common identities, timestamps and interfaces across transportation, yard and warehouse systems.

Evidence / contextGartner Peer Insights · Current · market definition only USDOT · 2026 plan · released May 2026

07Local optimization hides network variabilityNetwork

Problem

Every facility develops its own operating playbook, and local optimization hides network-wide variability.

Impact

Leadership cannot reliably distinguish efficient sites from sites masking problems, improvements remain local and new-site rollouts become bespoke projects.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether processes evolve around local people, layouts, legacy systems and tribal knowledge, so sites measure dwell, utilization, moves and turns differently, often from incomplete data.

Required capability

Common workflows, event definitions, controls and metrics across the network, normalized so equivalent workflows can be compared across facilities, with configuration only where operations truly differ.

Evidence / contextInbound Logistics · Jan 2026 · vendor-authored guidance

08Trailer pools and empties are out of balance across sitesNetwork

Problem

Trailer pools and empties are out of balance across sites.

Impact

Loads wait on equipment at one site while empties accumulate at another, repositioning miles rise and carriers are asked for trailers the network already owns.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether each site manages its pool from a local count, and whether pool targets, empty returns and repositioning are decided without a shared network view.

Required capability

Network-level pool targets and a shared, current count of trailers and empties by site, so repositioning is decided from the network’s state rather than each site’s.

Framework interpretation. No external source claimed.

09The visit cannot be reconstructed cleanlyRisk

Problem

Facilities cannot always reconstruct exactly what happened during a visit.

Impact

Detention disputes, claims, chargebacks, audit work, billing delays and cross-party finger-pointing. ATRI reports that 94.5% of fleets charge detention fees and are paid on fewer than half of those invoices.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether gate logs, paperwork, seal checks, timestamps and operational actions live in separate systems or manual records.

Required capability

A timestamped record of the visit that links identity, equipment, load, location, documents and handoffs.

Evidence / contextATRI · 2023 data · published Sep 2024

10Identity and authorization are inconsistently verifiedRisk

Problem

Driver, carrier, equipment and load authorization can be inconsistently verified.

Impact

Cargo fraud, theft exposure, unauthorized access, claims and physical-security risk. Confirmed cargo thefts in the United States and Canada rose 18% in 2025, and about 30% of US incidents were strategic or fraud-driven, the kind a verification step exists to catch.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether manual gate processes and fragmented appointment, identity and shipment data make verification inconsistent at scale.

Required capability

Verification of the relevant identities and authorizations against expected records, with anomalies routed into controlled exception workflows.

Evidence / contextUSDOT · 2026 plan · released May 2026 Verisk CargoNet · 2025 data · published Jan 2026 Munich Re Specialty and BSI · 2025 data · published Jun 2026

11Yard safety exposure is managed by habitRisk

Problem

Yard safety exposure is managed by habit rather than by a defined, observable process.

Impact

Pedestrian and yard truck conflicts, trailer creep, missed dock locks, near-misses that go unrecorded and incident exposure that varies by shift and site.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether safety rules for moves, dock locks, wheel chocks and pedestrian zones live in tribal knowledge and are enforced differently by shift, site and supervisor.

Required capability

Safety-critical steps built into the standard move and dock workflow and confirmed as part of execution, not remembered by the person doing the work.

Framework interpretation. No external source claimed.

12Detention is discovered after it is expensiveEconomics

Problem

Detention is often discovered after it has already become expensive.

Impact

Accessorial cost, lost driver hours, carrier dissatisfaction, service degradation and higher effective transportation cost. ATRI found detained trucks drove 14.6% faster on average afterward, so the cost is not only financial. With truckload operating margins below 1% in 2025, an unpaid detention invoice is the carrier’s margin.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether the milestone chain is incomplete or delayed, so teams cannot see where dwell is accumulating or who owns the next action.

Required capability

Continuous dwell measurement that exposes the controlling constraint and escalates before agreed thresholds are crossed.

Evidence / contextATRI · 2023 data · published Sep 2024 ATRI · 2025 data · published Jul 2026 FMCSA · In progress · findings not yet published

13Growth is treated as a capacity-buying problemEconomics

Problem

Sites report they are out of doors, trailers or people while door and trailer utilization is low, unmeasured or defined differently by site.

Impact

Capital and headcount added before the constraint is known, margin compression, and capacity requests that cannot be tested.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether the network adds physical capacity before quantifying time lost to waiting, searching, sequencing and coordination.

Required capability

Utilization and time lost per door, trailer, spotter and operating hour measured consistently, so a capacity request can be tested against recoverable time before capital is added.

Framework interpretation. No external source claimed.

14The economics of the yards remain fuzzyEconomics

Problem

Organizations cannot confidently quantify the economics of their yards.

Impact

Projects compete on features, the wrong sites receive investment and executive sponsorship weakens. The industry-average cost to run a truck reached a record $2.336 per mile in 2025, so unmeasured time in the yards is priced higher than it was a year ago.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether gate, dwell, move, labor, turn and exception data are incomplete or defined differently by facility.

Required capability

Common definitions and before-and-after measurement that tie operating change to labor, transportation, capacity, risk and capital economics.

Evidence / contextATRI · 2025 data · published Jul 2026

15Automation arrives before the process is deterministicAutomation

Problem

Automation is purchased before the underlying operating process is deterministic.

Impact

Pilots remain narrow, exceptions fall back to humans, integrations multiply, time-to-value stretches and scaled returns become harder to reproduce.

Cause to investigate

Hypothesis

Investigate whether processes differ by site, operating state is incomplete and people compensate for undocumented exceptions that automation would have to inherit.

Required capability

Ground truth and a standard digital workflow established before physical execution is automated.

Evidence / contextFreightWaves · Sep 21, 2026 USDOT · 2026 plan · released May 2026

Evidence layer

Separate market evidence from the framework’s interpretation.

These sources establish documented conditions around detention, operating cost, cargo theft, visibility, security, YMS scope, interoperability and automation readiness. They do not independently prove every causal relationship in the Yard Problem Map.

ATRI

2025 data · published Jul 2026

Documented conditionIndustry-average cost to operate a truck in 2025 was $2.336 per mile, a record and 3.4% above 2024 (annual carrier cost survey, modeled). Truckload and refrigerated operating margins stayed below 1.0%. Carriers cut truck counts 2.4%.

Map interpretationThe map reads a record cost per mile as the price of every hour a facility makes a truck wait. ATRI prices the truck, not the yards, and says nothing about where the waiting happens.

Operational costs of trucking, 2026 update ↗

Verisk CargoNet

2025 data · published Jan 2026

Documented condition3,594 supply chain crime events recorded across the United States and Canada in 2025; confirmed cargo thefts rose 18% to 2,646; estimated losses near $725 million, up 60%, an estimate over reported incidents.

Map interpretationThe map treats theft exposure as one cost of inconsistent verification at the gate. CargoNet counts incidents wherever they occur; it does not attribute them to yards or to gate practice.

Cargo theft trends, 2025 ↗

Munich Re Specialty and BSI

2025 data · published Jun 2026

Documented condition30% of US cargo theft incidents in 2025 were strategic or fraud-driven: nearly a third involved criminals who never touched a vehicle or forced a lock. 22% of thefts globally involved insider participation.

Map interpretationThe map reads deception-based theft as the case for verifying identity and authorization against expected records. The report classifies tactics; it does not test any gate control.

Cargo theft tactics and trends, 2026 ↗

ATRI

2023 data · published Sep 2024

Documented condition39.3% of stops involved detention (driver-reported, driver dataset); more than 135 million hours lost (ATRI industry estimate, for-hire trucking); $3.6B direct expense and $11.5B lost productivity (industry estimates).

Map interpretationThe map treats detention as downstream of fragmented yard state. ATRI documents the cost of detention, not its cause. No newer study measures detention at this scale; the federal study meant to has not reported.

Driver detention research ↗

FMCSA

In progress · findings not yet published

Documented conditionDriver detention is under active federal study (Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, about 80 carriers and 2,500 drivers). Objective measurement is the stated need. Findings not yet published.

Map interpretationCited as evidence that detention is under active federal study and that objective measurement is the stated need. No number on this page comes from it.

Impact of Driver Detention Time on Safety and Operations ↗

USDOT

2026 plan · released May 2026

Documented conditionCargo-theft and fraud reduction, a digital standard for freight data, and testing of automated freight technologies (May 2026).

Map interpretationCited for national policy direction on freight data standards, cargo security and automation testing. It says nothing about yards specifically.

2026 National Freight Strategic Plan ↗

Gartner Peer Insights

Current · market definition only

Documented conditionPublic market definition: gate/kiosk, yard and dock-door scheduling under planning, direction, monitoring and control.

Map interpretationCited only to show how the market defines yard management scope. It implies no endorsement of any vendor, of PICS or of this framework.

Market definition only. No endorsement implied.

Yard Management market ↗

FreightWaves

Sep 21, 2026

Documented conditionSeptember 21, 2026 reporting, quoting one autonomy vendor, on what slows autonomous yard truck adoption: inconsistent YMS coverage, non-standard processes, yards built for manual work.

Map interpretationOne vendor’s view of what slows adoption, reported by FreightWaves. Not industry consensus, and visibility is not among its stated blockers.

Yard automation adoption ↗

FreightWaves

Feb 2026

Documented conditionPaper logs, phone calls and radio still run yard activity at many organizations; visibility often stops at the yard; drivers search instead of executing moves.

Map interpretationDocuments that manual coordination persists and that visibility often stops at the yard. It does not establish causation, and its primary voice is a software vendor.

Yard management in 2026 ↗

Inbound Logistics

Jan 2026 · vendor-authored guidance

Documented conditionStandardizing check-in, move requests and communication reduces variability across sites.

Map interpretationVendor-authored guidance that standardizing the driver-facing process reduces variability. Guidance, not evidence of outcomes.

Improving yard visibility ↗

The Yard Problem Map · Version 1.0 · September 23, 2026 · Sources listed above · yardflow.ai/resources/yard-problem-map/

Built to be argued with

Bring us one ugly turn.

If you operate yards and this map misses a recurring failure mode, send the visit you would use to prove it. The research gets better when operators can break the model.

Send a failure mode How YardFlow approaches the handoff →

More guides

What is a yard management system? →What is yard orchestration? →Yard modernization →Detention charges in trucking →Dock scheduling software →Trailer tracking →YMS vs. YNS →Yard management companies: 2026 →Inland26 2026 field guide →The research paper →

The research ends above this line. If the map raised a question about your own network, the calendar below is open; nothing above depends on it.

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Casey Larkin, YardFlow. Jake Koppinger, our founder, joins when it helps.