Freight volume, rates, driver detention, fuel costs, and consumer demand all have risen significantly over the last two years, while CDL school enrollments have declined. That adds up to an extremely tight truck capacity market for freight brokers/logistics providers like you. If you’re like most transportation businesses, you’re presently using a combination of phone calls, email messages and load boards to source carrier capacity. These traditional carrier sourcing methods can produce results, but they often are extremely inefficient. In a recent Trucker Tools survey, 80 percent of the freight brokers and 3PLs surveyed reported spending 30 minutes to two hours or more covering a single load. Know that there is a faster and more efficient way to source carrier capacity.
Check out these five reasons why Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity carrier relationship management platform should be your go-to source for all types of capacity, including flatbed, reefer, van, power only and more.
1. Access to the Small and Mid-Sized Carriers Using Trucker Tools
Smaller carriers move the lion’s share of truckload freight in the United States. In fact, of the estimated 1.2 million U.S. carriers in operation today, 97 percent run 20 or fewer trucks and 90 percent run six or fewer trucks. Until relatively recently, it’s often been difficult to tap into this small and mid-sized carrier capacity because there hasn’t been a universal technology platform through which to communicate and conduct business with these carriers. The good news is that when you use Smart Capacity to source truck capacity, you gain access to the 1.6 million drivers who have downloaded the Trucker Tools driver app and the 190,000 small and mid-sized carriers actively using Trucker Tools’ carrier platform.
2. Variety of Capacity Types Available in Smart Capacity
Trucker Tools doesn’t specialize in any one particular type of capacity. In fact, we don’t determine what capacity to offer through Smart Capacity at all — the owner operators and carriers using our free software do. As a result, you’ll see a variety of equipment types available when you search for capacity in Smart Capacity, including flatbed, reefer, van, power only, auto carrier, step deck, box truck and other types of capacity. When you search for trucks in Smart Capacity, you can narrow your results by specifying the lane, date(s), type of equipment needed and weight of the load to ensure you’re only looking at relevant capacity.
3. Designed To Keep Carriers In-Network and Moving Your Loads
What sets Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity apart from other digital freight matching software is that Smart Capacity is a true carrier relationship management platform. We’ve made it easy for you to search for capacity from a customized list of carriers, which could be carriers you’ve already onboarded, your in-network carriers or top performers. The ability to search for the capacity offered by a specific group of carriers can be an extremely important capability if you’re trying to strengthen existing carrier relationships and/or foster new relationships with carriers who’ve maybe only pulled a load or two for you previously. With Smart Capacity, it’s also easy to book backhauls and multiple loads in a single conversation with a carrier.
4. More Efficient Than Load Boards, Manual Sourcing Methods
The beauty of Smart Capacity is that you no longer have to make cold call after cold call to cover a load. Instead, you can quickly search Smart Capacity to determine which carriers have capacity available when and where you need it. Once you find the right truck for the load, you can pick up the phone and call the carrier and have a conversation about the rate. When you call a carrier after finding one of their trucks available in Smart Capacity, you already know that the carrier is likely to have capacity available. This translates into fewer calls to carriers who are already booked up and quicker conversations with the carriers that you do contact.
5. Offer Carriers Anytime Access to Loads with Book It Now®
Time and efficiency are everything in this business, whether you’re moving 10,000+ loads per month or a few hundred loads each month. Time and efficiency matter to carriers and drivers, too. After all, the more efficient your operations are, the greater your ability to move more freight volume. With Trucker Tools’ Book It Now®, you can make your loads bookable via the Trucker Tools driver app and free carrier platform. Posting your loads as Book It Now® loads with your preferred rate included offers carriers transparency and the freedom to book your loads at times that are convenient for them. Book It Now® also greatly reduces the time and human resources needed for finalizing bookings with carriers.
If you want to learn more about how powerful Book It Now® can be, check out “Five Ways Book-It-Now® Can Help Freight Brokers and 3PLs Scale.”
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity.
