When capacity is tight, it’s crucial to manage your carrier relationships effectively. With the right carrier relationship management technology, you can cover your shippers’ loads faster, reduce your costs and build long-term, productive relationships with high-performing carriers. In this blog, you’ll learn how you can use Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity to offer a customized, convenient technology experience to carriers, engage with out of network carriers, automate your internal processes, and leverage the power of Trucker Tools’ carrier and owner operator network to grow your business. Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity integrates with the most popular transportation management systems in use today, which means you can access all of these carrier relationship management tools right in your TMS.
Check out these 10 reasons to use Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity for carrier relationship management.
1. Cover Loads Faster
With the digital freight matching component of Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity, you can search for both in and out of network capacity right in your TMS with a few clicks of your mouse. Unlike load boards, the capacity you see available via Smart Capacity is based on the real-time movement of trucks.
2. Reduce Phone Calls, Manual Communications with Carriers
Using Smart Capacity to manage capacity searches reduces manual processes for both your business and carriers. When you search Smart Capacity, you can quickly find carriers who are likely to have trucks when and where you need them and only contact those carriers. Your carrier partners will appreciate fewer cold calls and the resulting shorter phone conversations.
3. Access to Future Capacity
Smart Capacity’s predictive load matching tells you where truck capacity will be available in the future, which provides you with a competitive advantage. Predictive load matching allows you to engage with carriers earlier on in the sales cycle. With this technology, you can locate and secure capacity through Trucker Tools’ private network before it ever appears on public load boards.
4. Increase Carrier Utilization
A key feature in Smart Capacity is the ability to first search for capacity from among those carriers that you’ve already onboarded. Re-using already-onboarded carriers helps you cover loads faster and build your carrier relationships load by load. It also helps you keep your operating costs in check.
5. Reduce Costs
Using Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity for carrier relationship management ultimately lets you do more with less, streamlining and digitizing how you secure capacity and communicate with carriers. When your team can cover loads faster, your cost per load is reduced — and you free up your team members’ time to move more volume.
6. Build Your Network with Convenient Digital Load Booking
One of the best ways to keep carriers in your network is to use technology that makes you easy to do business with. Book It Now®, Trucker Tools’ automated load booking technology, allows owner operators and carriers to book your loads digitally 24 hours/day and seven days/week. When a carrier/owner op books one of your Book It Now® loads, the appointment is automatically scheduled in your TMS.
7. Broker Advantage
Trucker Tools’ Broker Advantage is a white label carrier portal that can be customized to suit your particular needs as a freight broker or 3PL. With Broker Advantage, you can create a branded digital portal for owner operators and carriers that they can use to find and book your loads/reloads, learn about discounts and incentives, or submit BOL/POD documents. Providing a one-stop shop experience for carriers saves them time, which can help you become a preferred broker among carriers.
8. Automated Load Tracking
Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity includes a robust, real-time visibility platform that reduces check calls and provides you with digital load location updates every five to 15 minutes. Automating your load tracking with Smart Capacity reduces the number of check calls that carriers and drivers receive, which also can make you an attractive partner to carriers.
9. Access to Trucker Tools’ Extensive Carrier/Owner Operator Network
With Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity, you gain access to the more than 1.5 million drivers and 175,000+ carriers using Trucker Tools’ technology. It’s worth noting that many of the carriers on the Trucker Tools network are small carriers running 10 trucks or fewer. Smart Capacity makes it easy for you to tap into Trucker Tools’ enormous carrier network when and where you need it.
10.
Build Strong Long-term Relationships with Carriers
All of the above features and tools included in Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity are designed to save your team and your carrier partners time, while strengthening your relationships with one another. When you make fewer phone calls to carriers, offer them anytime-access to your loads, and make it easy to engage with your business, they’re more likely to stay in or join your network.
If you’re struggling with carrier retention, be sure to read Five Insights on Retaining Carriers During an Unprecedented Peak Season. Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity, which includes digital freight matching, real-time load tracking and automated load booking with Book It Now®.
