As a successful freight broker, you know that having a solid carrier network makes your life easier. When you have a network of carriers you can rely on, it’s easier to cover customer freight, especially those hard to cover lanes and loads and freight that require special handling. What you may not know is that carrier relationship management software can provide a huge boost when it comes to strengthening your relationships with existing carriers and bringing high-performing carriers into your ecosystem. Software platforms like Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity give you the tools to offer premium loads and other perks to specific carriers to help you cultivate long-lasting relationships that also will make you a more productive freight broker.
Carrier Relationship Management Basics
Any software that calls itself a carrier relationship management platform should be designed with relationship-building in mind. What sets carrier relationship management software apart from other platforms is that it includes a tool set that is made to increase the frequency with which carriers run your freight. Traditional capacity sourcing systems tend to focus on individual transactions, one-load wonders as our founder Prasad Gollapalli likes to call them, instead of the long-term arc of your relationship with a carrier over time.
Carrier relationship management software like Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity gives you the tools to build and enhance carrier loyalty from the get-go. Smarty Capacity lets you search for capacity from a customized list of carriers before you search capacity in the broader marketplace so that you can easily offer loads and reloads to carriers who’ve already been onboarded with your company. Our carrier relationship management software allows you to offer premium loads, in-app and online load booking, digital rate confirmations, and other perks to specific carriers as incentives to keep them running your loads. Other powerful tools like Broker Advantage and our new Driver Loyalty Program add additional tools to help deepen carrier loyalty even further.
How Carrier Relationship Management Software Builds Carrier Loyalty
Trucking companies and owner operators are more tech-savvy than they’re often given credit for. Most carriers and drivers are used to using technology to interact with brokers in their day-to-day work.They aren’t generally opposed to using technology, but they do prefer to use tech that provides some benefit to them — not just to brokers or shippers.
Carrier relationship management platforms such as Smart Capacity provide significant benefits to owner ops and carriers. The carrier relationship management tools mentioned above save carriers and their employees time. When they are able to send you digital rate confirmations with a few clicks of a computer mouse instead of spending 10 or 15 minutes trying to connect with you by phone, it helps them be more productive. If a driver can search for and book your loads with a few taps on their smart phone, that saves them time. When you send a carrier a message through Smart Capacity offering them backhauls and additional loads in their favorite lanes a week in advance, that helps them out because they don’t have to look for loads.
Access to Nearly 2 Million Drivers and 250,000 Carriers — When You Need It
There are, of course, times when you need to reach outside of your carrier network to source capacity from carriers and owner operators that your company hasn’t worked with previously. With Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity, when this occurs you can tap into Trucker Tools’ network of nearly 2 million drivers and 250,000 carriers. Most of the carriers in the Trucker Tools network run 10 trucks or fewer. As such, Smart Capacity provides you with access to one of the coveted types of truck capacity, small carrier capacity. You can leverage Smart Capacity’s carrier relationship management tools to reach out to new owner operators and carriers and start building relationships with them beginning with the very first load(s) they haul for you.
Read “Seven Ways Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity Helps You Foster Carrier Relationships.” Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity carrier relationship management platform.
