According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, productivity increases have allowed the United States business sector to produce nine times more goods and services since 1947 with little increase in the number of hours worked. In your freight broker or 3PL business, increasing productivity offers you the same value proposition. Raising productivity offers you a chance to increase your volume and revenue without incurring additional expenses.
All of Trucker Tools’ digital solutions integrate with multiple technologies and platforms to help you raise your productivity and increase the operational efficiency of your business. One of the most powerful integrations in our portfolio is the integration between our digital freight matching platform and McLeod Software’s PowerBroker transportation management system. The integration allows 3PL and brokerage team members to access Trucker Tools’ capacity data directly in PowerBroker’s interface.
Check out these three ways to increase productivity with Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching and McLeod’s PowerBroker TMS.
1. Locate Capacity Faster
Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform gives you instant, digital access to information on what trucks are available in specific lanes, which makes the process for covering a load more efficient. With traditional capacity searches, you either post or browse load boards to find the right truck for a shipper’s load, or you may call or email carriers to find out what trucks they have available. These methods for finding capacity are woefully inefficient because they aren’t real-time. As a result, it’s easy to sink a lot of time into covering just a single load and still have nothing to show for it.
With Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, you can search for capacity by freight/truck type, dates, lanes, weight and more. You can restrict your searches to in-network capacity or search for out of network capacity. More than 1.3 million truckers have downloaded the Trucker Tools driver app and more than 165,000 carriers use Trucker Tools’ carrier platform. Using Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform gives you access to these drivers and carriers. The integration between Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform and McLeod Software’s PowerBroker TMS lets you view Trucker Tools’ capacity data directly in the TMS. This increases productivity further because you don’t need to open a new software program or browser to get the capacity information they need.
2. Easy To Book Reloads, Repeat Loads with Preferred Carriers
When capacity is as tight as it is right now, it can be very difficult to keep carriers and drivers running your loads. A recent Trucker Tools survey found that 80 percent of brokers and 3PLs are onboarding up to 500 new carriers each month. The same survey found that 80 percent of brokers and 3PLs also are only booking one to six loads per carrier per month. “One-load-wonders” as we like to call them are when you onboard a new carrier for a single load and then never use that carrier again. One-load-wonders hurt your productivity because of the time and resources required to onboard these new carriers, time and resources that are wasted when you don’t book repeat loads with the carrier/driver.
Another way to increase productivity with Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching and McLeod’s PowerBroker TMS is to use the integration to quickly book backhauls and repeat loads with carriers in a single communication. Picture this: with a few mouse clicks, you search for and find a truck for a load using the Trucker Tools/PowerBroker TMS integration. You call the carrier to discuss the rate and book the truck. While you’re on the phone with the carrier, you quickly search Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform via the McLeod TMS to find a backhaul and other load options for that carrier. With instant access to this information, you can book multiple loads with the carrier right then and there.
3. Predictive Freight Matching
The third of many ways that you can increase productivity with Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching and McLeod’s PowerBroker TMS is with predictive freight matching. Trucker Tools’ predictive freight matching uses powerful algorithms and machine learning to tell you where truck capacity will be available in the future. Our predictive freight matching can predict where trucks will be available with high accuracy because there are so many truckers and carriers using Trucker Tools’ digital solutions. Simply enter the dates and lane(s) for which you need capacity and you’ll be shown where truck capacity will be available in the future.
The ability to see what capacity will be available in the future gives you the power to book trucks with carriers before that capacity is ever publicly available on load boards or elsewhere. In addition to providing you with a competitive advantage, predictive load matching helps you cover loads ahead of time and quickly so that you’re not scrambling to find capacity the day before the load needs to be picked up.
To learn more about McLeod Software’s PowerBroker TMS, visit https://www.mcleodsoftware.com/3pl-brokerage/.
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, real-time freight tracking and Book It Now®.
