Technology has become an integral part of how you do business. It can deliver higher gross margins, greater productivity and simplified workflows for your team. One of the technologies that can provide the highest return on investment for you as a freight broker or 3PL business is Book It Now®. Book It Now® automates rate cons and load/truck booking for you and your carriers, providing all involved with time savings and increased operational efficiency.
In this blog, you’ll learn the basics about Book It Now®, including how it can help your business scale and why Trucker Tools’ Book It Now® should be your top choice for automated load booking technology.
1. Trucker Tools Launched Book It Now® First
Just over three years ago, Trucker Tools launched Book It Now®. Book It Now® integrates with your TMS and allows carriers and drivers to book your loads digitally using Trucker Tools’ free driver app and carrier platform. Trucker Tools was the first tech company in the industry to launch this automated load booking tool and other tech companies quickly followed our lead.
This matters for practical reasons. Our developers have spent the last three plus years listening to feedback from our users about how to make our Book It Now® tool as effective and seamless as possible. Trucker Tools’ Book It Now® is a mature technology that is tested and proven. It’s not in its infancy. It works well and the freight brokers, logistics companies, carriers and drivers that use Book It Now® can attest to this fact.
2. Book It Now® Saves Time
Book It Now® is popular with brokers and carriers alike because it is a major time-saver. As a broker or 3PL, when you post a load as a Book It Now® load to Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity platform, you must post your preferred rate on the load. Owner operators using our app and carriers using our free carrier software have the option to instantly book the load at your listed rate or send you an alternate rate quote.
Book It Now® greatly reduces the time needed for rate confirmations and negotiations. When one of your Book It Now® loads is booked through Trucker Tools’ app or carrier platform, the appointment is automatically scheduled in your TMS. Book It Now® saves your team time and saves your carrier partners time — and that’s invaluable.
3. Book It Now® Is Scalable
Book It Now® also can help you scale your business. With the automation and time-savings provided by Book It Now®, you have the opportunity to increase your load volume without hiring on additional team members. To illustrate this scalability, let’s say, for example, that you decide to make 25 percent of your loads Book It Now® loads. Let’s also imagine that on an average day prior to implementing Book It Now®, it takes your carrier sales reps an average of 30 minutes to cover those same loads. Once you implement Book It Now® and make 25 percent of your loads Book It Now® loads, you gain back the 30 minutes per load that your team previously spent manually covering those loads. With 30 minutes per load saved, you gain valuable time that your team can use to book more loads.
Book It Now® is scalable from another perspective, too. As your load volume increases and you add additional shippers and lanes, you can continue to use Trucker Tools’ Book It Now® technology, no matter how big you grow. Book It Now® is a truly scalable technology in that it’s made to be used by freight brokers and 3PLs of all sizes. As your business grows, you won’t need to implement a new load booking tool to replace Book It Now®.
4. Carriers Expect Book It Now® As an Option
Last year, we surveyed more than 150 owner operators and carriers about how they find and book loads. The survey found that 76 percent of those carriers and owner ops had booked a load through an app or website within the previous 60 days. The same survey also found that it takes most carriers and owner operators 10 minutes or less to book loads with Trucker Tools’ Book It Now®. To dig into this a bit further, 11 percent of those surveyed said it takes less than a minute to book a Book It Now® load and 41 percent reported that it takes one to 10 minutes.
It’s clear that automated, digital load booking is a technology that fleets and drivers have come to accept and expect. It’s also clear that using Book It Now® in your operations can help you become a preferred broker with carriers. Here’s why: Trucker Tools’ Book It Now® saves carriers and drivers a significant amount of time. When they don’t have to negotiate rates by phone or email and can instead submit rate quotes and book loads digitally, owner ops and fleets have more time to concentrate on moving more loads and upping their revenue.
Read “Avoid Death by Excel: How Trucker Tools Can Automate Broker and 3PL Operations of All Sizes.” Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ Book It Now®.
