As someone who works in or owns a freight broker or 3PL business, you no doubt have heard a lot about digital freight matching over the last year or two. Digital freight matching is a technology that is relatively new in the transportation industry that automates and streamlines how you locate and secure truck capacity. One of the ways in which this technology is different from load boards is that it’s a real-time technology that integrates directly with your transportation management system. The benefits of using digital freight matching instead of load boards and manual capacity searches in your operations are numerous. Digital freight matching increases operational efficiency, simplifies employee workflows, helps you scale without increasing overhead, offers resiliency in the face of market volatility and much, much more.
Read on to learn what digital freight matching is and how your company can benefit from using this transformative technology.
How Digital Freight Matching Works
Digital freight matching is a type of software that uses machine learning, process algorithms and API-based technology to help brokers and 3PLs find the right truck for a shipper’s load quickly. Digital freight matching takes the parameters that you have for the load (lane, pickup/drop off dates/times, weight, type of cargo) and helps you quickly locate trucks that match the load/shipper’s requirement. The software uses machine learning to continually improve the results that you’re shown. With digital freight matching, you can locate capacity in real-time at a much faster rate than you can with other methods.
The Difference Between Digital Freight Matching and Load Boards? Time.
You may hear people in the industry talk about load boards and digital freight matching as if they are the same, but that’s far from the case. Public load boards are not a real-time technology. There are several time-delays that occur when you use load boards to find truck capacity. First, you post your load on the load board and wait for responses from carriers. Once you start receiving responses, you must respond to them individually and decide whether or not to keep your load posted on the load board in the interim. If you use multiple load boards for the same load, you have to monitor multiple responses to your multiple posts and respond accordingly. The more time that passes between your original posting and your responses, the more likely it is that the carrier who responded to your post has since found a load elsewhere.
Digital freight matching platforms like Trucker Tools’ are real-time. The trucks you see in Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform come from multiple live sources. They include the 165,000+ small carriers who use Trucker Tools’ carrier software platform and the more than 1.3 million truckers who’ve downloaded the Trucker Tools mobile app. You also can add the capacity information you receive from carriers via email to Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, literally putting all of your capacity choices in one searchable place. Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform lets you search these multiple sources for trucks in real-time with a few clicks of a mouse. If a carrier on Trucker Tools’ carrier platform or owner operator using the Trucker Tools app takes a load from another broker, you will no longer see that truck listed as available in Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform. With digital freight matching, you’re not wasting time chasing capacity that has already been booked with another broker.
Trucker Tools’ Digital Freight Matching Platform: The Competitive Edge Needed When Capacity Is Tight
Finding capacity using Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform takes seconds, not minutes or hours. Trucker Tools’ platform is integrated with your TMS, so it pulls all of the load details automatically and directly from your TMS. When you search for a truck for an individual load in Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, you’re shown the best matches for that load at the very top of the search results list. You never have to scroll through page after page of search results to find the best truck for the load. You can search for capacity from within your customized list of preferred carriers or search for out of network capacity with Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform. Predictive load matching allows you to see future truck capacity, as well, before it’s posted publicly.
Once you find a truck for the load in Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, you can call the carrier to discuss the rate. While you’re on the phone with the carrier, it’s easy to search for a backhaul or future load in the platform and book multiple loads with the carrier in a single conversation. If you want to reduce the time you spend on rate negotiations, post your loads to Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform as Book-It-Now® loads. Doing so gives carriers and owner operators the ability to book your loads digitally through the Trucker Tools mobile app or carrier platform. Book-It-Now’s integration with your TMS makes it a completely automated process for you and carriers/owner operators.
For more on the benefits of using digital freight matching, read Unlock Potential Profit, Increase Carrier Utilization with Trucker Tools’ Digital Freight Matching.
Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform and Book-It-Now®.
