Online load board Truckstop.com announced the release of Book It Now, a new feature for the Truckstop Mobile app that allows freight brokers and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) of all sizes the ability to add instant load board functionality to their businesses, according to its website.
Truckstop.com CEO Paris Cole highlighted the company’s innovative strategies with FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller as part of a series of “Fuller Speed Ahead” episodes at FreightWaves LIVE Chicago.
“We’re making connections,” said Cole. “We’re creating relationships between brokers and carriers. What we’re doing now is continuing to extend that and reduce the friction that exists today between those two parties.”
Carriers are able to see the rate, pickup and drop off, as well as broker information all before booking a load, according to Truckstop.com. Once carriers are added to a broker’s preferred carrier list, their Book It Now loads will be seen on the Truckstop Mobile.
Fuller described the Boise, Idaho-based Truckstop.com as the “Nasdaq of Freight” for its efforts to create a central marketplace.
“That’s certainly the direction we’re going,” Cole said. “As we talk to our customers, that’s where they want us to take them. It’s interesting to me that it’s not just the freight brokers or the 3PLs that are asking us to do it; it’s our carrier customers as well. There’s a lot of friction for them and also poor experience. They prefer many times not to negotiate if they don’t have to.”
The Book It Now service is scheduled to go live on November 18.
Cole stated that Truckstop.com has no desire to become a broker, but instead strives to make it easier for brokers and carriers to connect.
“There’s so much waste and extra time just [for brokers and carriers] to find each other, so if we can help them find each other and finalize the deal more easily, that in of itself is tremendously valuable for our customers,” said Cole.
Truckstop.com’s Book It Now announcement echoes the transition the company has made in recent years from a founder-driven to a professional management-run company. As one of the world’s first software-as-a-service (SaaS) for the trucking industry as an online load board, the neutral freight matching service has since put much effort into exploring innovative technologies.
“We don’t claim to know everything and that’s why we bring outside parties in,” said Cole. That’s why we partner with so many 3PLs to learn and to grow and to really try to do what we think makes sense for our customers and for the industry.”
The company’s founder, Scott Moscrip, saw avenues of opportunity that Truckstop.com could explore, but he knew he couldn’t do it by himself, according to Cole. So Moscrip hired Cole and others in 2013 to help grow the business and add additional services for its customers.
According to Cole, a lot of the decisions that Moscrip usually made slowly transitioned to him as he became more tenured at Truckstop.com, thus making his eventual transition to CEO a smooth one.
“Because I joined as the CFO, not the CEO, I had two and a half years to really learn the business and saw it from maybe a different perspective than what Scott [Moscrip] was looking at,” said Cole.
This spring, Silicon Valley-based growth equity firm ICONIQ Capital announced a $1 billion investment in Truckstop.com, as reported earlier by FreightWaves.
“They didn’t just invest to give us the money and sit on our laurels,” Cole said. “Really, they saw what we were doing and what the opportunities were for us to help the industry, and that’s why they made the investment.”
Truckstop.com is proud to market itself as the largest neutral freight matching marketplace in North America. Founded in 1995 in Moscrip’s basement, the company has since seen exponential growth and currently has 450 employees in the U.S. and Canada, according to its website.
