Digital freight matching and load booking automation tools like Trucker Tools’ Book It Now® are changing how brokers and 3PLs do business. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact. The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated just how important both technologies are and will continue to be in the future. Both technologies provide you with the opportunity to scale your business, i.e. grow without restructuring your company and/or increasing your headcount. These innovative technologies help you keep pace with your competitors and keep your operating costs low, while strengthening your relationships with carrier and shipper stakeholders. When demand is erratic and difficult to predict as it has been in the last year and a half, digital freight matching and load booking automation help you reduce your costs, increase efficiency and build a loyal carrier network.
Read on to find out exactly why digital freight matching and Book It Now® should be on your radar and how you can use both technologies to grow your business.
Digital Freight Matching Reduces Cost Per Load
In the simplest of terms, digital freight matching connects brokers and 3PLs like you who are looking for capacity with carriers and owner operators who are looking for loads in one digital marketplace. What makes digital freight matching different from load boards and manual capacity searches is that it’s a real-time, highly accurate technology. If, for example, you search for a truck for a load using Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, you’ll see capacity data that is based on the actual GPS-based locations of trucks. This is in contrast to load boards and spreadsheets that require someone to update capacity and load information manually — and which often never happens.
With Trucker Tools’ real-time digital freight matching platform, you can search for capacity in a matter of seconds. You have the option to search from your customized list of preferred in-network carriers, or you can search for out-of-network capacity provided by the 1.4 million drivers and 165,000 carriers using Trucker Tools. Either way, you can locate available capacity faster with digital freight matching. Digital freight matching helps you cover loads faster, thereby reducing the time and resources required to cover the load, which reduces your cost per load. Using innovative technology like digital freight matching to cover shipper loads quickly also can help you outperform your competitors who may still rely on manual emails, phone calls and load board postings to source capacity.
Boost Productivity with Book It Now®
Trucker Tools’ Book It Now® is a powerful automation technology that lets carriers and drivers search and find your loads via the Trucker Tools’ mobile app or carrier software platform. The beauty of Book It Now® is that it automates what is often one of the most time-consuming activities in your business — finalizing bookings with carriers. Book It Now® is integrated with your transportation management system so that when a carrier or driver books one of your Book It Now® loads, the booking is automatically recorded in your TMS. Like digital freight matching, Book It Now® greatly reduces the time and resources needed to finalize load bookings with carriers.
When used together, Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching and Book It Now® offer a level of scalability that cannot be achieved when you do everything manually. With both digital freight matching and Book It Now®, you can increase your load count without restructuring your business or hiring on new employees. The time you save by automating capacity searches and bookings frees up internal resources to book more loads and provide even better service to shippers.
Use Digital Freight Matching and Book It Now® To Build a Loyal Carrier Network
It can be difficult to differentiate yourself from other brokers and 3PLs when there’s a capacity crunch and it’s a carriers market, as it is currently. One of the best ways that you can keep carriers in your network and expand your carrier network is to use technology that benefits carriers. Just like you, carriers can increase their profit margins by increasing their efficiency. Just like you in your business, they appreciate convenience and are more likely to want to continue working with a partner if it’s easy to do business with them.
Both digital freight matching and Book It Now® offer carriers greater efficiency. Digital freight matching reduces the number of emails that you send and phones calls that you make to carriers about available capacity. It also eliminates the need for load boards, which are time-consuming for carriers to use. Carriers and owner operators often love Book It Now® because it allows them to view and book your load at times that are most convenient for them. They don’t have to wait for your office to open to find out what you have for loads or to book loads with you. They can do both 24 hours/day and seven days/week thanks to Trucker Tools.
Check out Broker Benefits of the Loadsure and Trucker Tools Partnership to discover how Loadsure’s load-by-load freight insurance can save you money and time. Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform and Book It Now®.
