Your ability to connect with carriers is crucial to your success as a freight broker, whether it’s by phone, through an app or digital portal, or via email. Of course, the goal is not to just connect with any carrier out there, but rather to make contact with those carriers who have available capacity and who move your type of freight. In a lightning fast industry like transportation, digitization can be an effective pathway for connecting with carriers more efficiently and with greater purpose. Software platforms such as Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity provide you with the digital tools to do just that, whether you’re searching for in-network or out of network capacity or special handling for that difficult to cover lane.
Read on to discover how Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity software platform connects freight brokers like you with carrier capacity in real-time.
1. Smart Capacity’s Matching Algorithm
Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity broker software platform uses artificial intelligence and a proprietary algorithm to automatically match your uncovered loads with both in-network and out-of-network truckload capacity. What differentiates the digital freight matching technology of Smart Capacity from load boards is that it’s a real-time technology. Smart Capacity’s truck availability data is based on the real-time, real-world movement of trucks as captured by transactions within Smart Capacity and the nearly 2 million drivers and 250,000 carriers using our driver and carrier technology. Each truck you see in Smart Capacity’s matching results includes the email address and/or phone number for the carrier. You also have the option to instantly send the carrier a message through Smart Capacity.
2. Search by Lane with Smart Search
You also can connect with carriers and their available capacity using Smart Capacity’s Smart Search tool. Located within the Loads List in Smart Capacity, the Smart Search tool allows you to create a lane search that provides you with all of the matches and quoting tools that our matching algorithm does. Smart Search is ideal for project sourcing and for covering those difficult to cover loads and lanes. When setting up a Smart Search, you specify the lane, pickup and delivery dates, type of load, whether you’re looking for team drivers and the shipper name.
3. Carrier Search
Smart Capacity’s Carrier Search provides you with yet another way to connect with carriers and their available truck capacity. Carrier Search also is a great way to source capacity for hard to cover loads and lanes. With Carrier Search, you can search for carriers using just the point of origin. The results you’ll get include matching carriers and those carriers who’ve historically been available in this lane. If you click on the historical tab, you can view carriers who prefer to deliver to this particular market and where else these carriers usually go by viewing their preferred destination(s).
4. Book It Now®
Posting your loads to Smart Capacity as Book It Now® loads also connects you with carriers and their capacity. When you post a load as a Book It Now® load, you can give specific carriers the ability to book the load digitally through Trucker Tools’ driver app or free carrier software platform. You also have the option to make your Book It Now® loads viewable and bookable by all of the owner operators and carriers who use Trucker Tools’ tech. Doing so connects you with carriers outside of your immediate network and can serve as a means of bringing new carriers and owner operators into your ecosystem.
5. Broker Advantage
Though there are certainly more than five ways that Smart Capacity connects freight brokers like you with carrier capacity, Broker Advantage is one of the newest ways to do so. Launched in 2020, Broker Advantage is a white label interface in Smart Capacity that lets you customize how carriers view and interact with your company via Trucker Tools’ software platform for carriers. The purpose of Broker Advantage is to build brand recognition for your company within Trucker Tools’ carrier network. How you use Broker Advantage is up to you, though most brokers use it to highlight hard to cover or premium loads, offer online load booking, or to provide updates on discounts or promotional programs. How ever you choose to use Broker Advantage, it raises your profile among the 250,000 carriers using Trucker Tools’ carrier platform.
For insights into how carriers use technology to find and book loads, read “New Carrier Survey: Five Takeaways for Freight Brokers and 3PLs.”
