With capacity as scarce as it presently is, you must leverage all of the tools you have at your disposal as a freight broker or logistics company to meet your customers’ needs. Over the last two to three years, digital freight matching technology has emerged as the most efficient way for carriers to find loads and for brokers/3PLs to locate and secure capacity. Unlike traditional load board technology, digital freight matching uses real-time data to ensure that you’re not chasing capacity that has already been taken and that carriers aren’t pursuing loads that have been booked by someone else. With Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity digital freight matching platform and Book It Now®, you can reduce the time required to cover a load, better manage your carrier relationships and offer carriers a convenient, digital way to interact with your business.
Read on to learn more about how Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching and Book It Now® outperform load boards.
Real-Time Data
Many shippers, carriers and freight brokers post their loads or capacity to multiple load boards. The idea is that the more eyes that see the post, the more likely the load or truck will be booked. Within the industry, this practice is sometimes referred to as “post and pray.” Once a load and available capacity are connected, the load and capacity essentially are off the market. The problem is that the other parties using load boards don’t know this and there is no automatic mechanism in place to remove these trucks and loads from load boards once they’re no longer available.
Smart Capacity, Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, integrates with your transportation management system so that drivers and carriers only see your loads that are truly available. The capacity information that you see in Smart Capacity is based on the real-time movement of trucks as captured by the Trucker Tools driver app and carrier software platform, which are used by 170,000+ carriers and 1.4 million drivers. You can trust the capacity data that you see in Smart Capacity because it is real-time and not entered manually like the load and capacity data is entered on load boards.
Simplified Capacity Searches
With real-time data you can trust in a searchable digital platform, your process for searching for capacity becomes streamlined. Instead of making 10 or 20 phone calls per load or posting your load to 10 different load boards, you can quickly search Smart Capacity for both in-network and out-of-network capacity. You can search for capacity by lane, date/time, weight, equipment type and other factors in a matter of seconds. When you search for capacity, the best matches are shown at the top of your search results page so that you can quickly get the information you need and move on to the next task. Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity also includes email parsing capabilities, which means you can automatically upload the capacity information you receive from carriers via email to the Smart Capacity platform. This puts all of your capacity data in one digital, searchable place, which is a major time-saver.
Once you search Smart Capacity and find the capacity in the lane on the date you need, you can reach out to the carrier by phone to negotiate the rate and finalize the booking. With Smart Capacity, you’re not cold-calling carriers for capacity or wasting time trying to book trucks that have already been booked by another broker. When you do pick up the phone to call a carrier, you already know based on Smart Capacity’s real-time data that the carrier is likely to have an available truck in the area, which makes for a much shorter phone call. You also can post your loads as Book It Now® loads in Smart Capacity. Doing so gives owner operators the ability to book your loads digitally through the Trucker Tools app and carrier dispatchers the ability to book loads digitally through Trucker Tools’ carrier software platform. Book It Now® greatly reduces the time and resources you need to finalize and secure capacity.
Carrier Relationship Management
You can use Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity for carrier relationship management purposes, as well. When you search for a truck for a load in Smart Capacity, you have the option to search for capacity from a customized list of in-network or already-onboarded carriers. This capability helps you reduce new carrier onboarding, which requires additional time and resources. It also helps you build stronger relationships with high-performing carriers and keep them in your network. With Smart Capacity, when you do call carriers, you can book the truck and offer tbackhauls in a single conversation, which further increases the chances that the carrier will want to run freight for you again.
The added convenience and efficiency that Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity digital freight matching and Book It Now® offer owner operators and carriers can help you keep them in your network and attract new carrier partners. Smart Capacity reduces the number of phone calls that carriers receive, which they always appreciate. Book It Now® offers owner operators and carriers 24 hour/day, seven day/week access to your loads, which means they can search for and book your loads easily and quickly and at times that are most convenient for them — not just during daytime business hours. Using these tools in your operations can incentivize owner operators and carriers to continue working with you again and again.
To find out how real-time technology can help your company, read Seven Ways Trucker Tools’ Tech Can Help You Build a Self-Sustaining Logistics Business.
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity digital freight matching and Book It Now®.
