PHOENIX – The crowded FreightTech field faces a continuous problem: How does a company make its products stand out when so much of their functionality overlaps with competitors’ offerings?
Most of what various FreightTech products offer in particular applications is identical, except for that last slice of functionality with which one company tries to set itself apart. And that’s where the fiercest battles take place.
That reality of the market has led the Truckload Carriers Association at its recent annual meetings to present a rapid-fire press conference, mostly of FreightTech manufacturers, although a regulatory discussion sneaked into this year’s event.
(A presentation at the press conference by TransFlo was covered separately by FreightWaves. A discussion by Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) executive Brian Mulshine about a study his company conducted with FreightWaves on the impact of roadside breakdowns, released in January, can be found here.)
Virtually all of the presentations at this year’s event were enhancements of existing products, and most were add-ons to standard industry tools, such as ELDs or transportation management systems … but not all.
In no particular order, this is what was presented at the TCA 2025 press conference in Phoenix.
BeyondTrucks
The SaaS-based TMS provider said it was rolling out a fuel card management feature that was described as “smart.”
The feature has two major characteristics. The first, CEO Hans Galland said, allows a dispatcher to “define logic on when a fuel card is activated or not activated.” That aspect of the card, he said, is not driven by AI. Rather, its parameters would be set by “simply rule-based logic that the dispatcher wants to use.
“If the driver is on a load, I want the driver’s card to be activated so they can refuel if they need to,” Galland said in describing the card offering. “It’s black or white.”
The second characteristic is AI-driven. It enables funds to be triggered by the dispatcher to activate payments that can go to a device. “It results in less brain power absorbed by trivial decisions of the dispatcher but also results in a reduction of fuel debts or abuse of cards,” Galland said.
All the presenters released prepared statements accompanying the press conference. In the case of BeyondTrucks, it said the fuel card management capabilities in the company’s TMS have several features.
Among others it laid out, BeyondTrucks said the new product can “automatically activate” a driver fuel card when certain “triggers” are reached, including something as basic as hauling a load. But it can also send codes that authorize payments for other charges.
FleetOps
CEO Liam Lynch said FleetOps’ latest offering is a tool that puts a company’s performance rating of its drivers into the cab, rather than on a spreadsheet that might be accessible to a driver only once a month.
“We’re taking those same analytics and performance management tools that we developed and we’re bringing them down into the cab, directly to the driver,” Lynch said. In doing so, he added, drivers will be able to see in real time how they are doing relative to the company’s various standards that trigger bonuses.
“Getting drivers to give us more miles is still the single biggest problem that every truck has,” Lynch added. Getting to that by simply raising driver pay, especially in the current freight market, “is a very hard thing to do. It’s very hard to pull that back.”
He described the current situation: different metrics for every individual driver, three or four days at the end of the month in spreadsheets, getting people to sign off, and “ultimately the driver finds out a week or two weeks into the next month how much pay will be in his paycheck,” Lynch said.
But Lynch said the new FleetOps tool that will calculate performance metrics is “a full end-to-end process that not just automates that end of month, but centralizes the process, takes it off spreadsheets and gives everybody a way to see what they’re doing.”
That helps the back office, but for a driver, “we’re showing him not just what he’s earned right now, but we’re also nudging him and telling him what he needs to do next to maximize his pay. That really provides a real sense of transparency, and that this fleet is actually going to pay me my bonus.”
Trucker Path
The app-based tool that is perpetually adding services for its users, including parking, is tying into the nation’s 511 services, according to CMO Chris Oliver. As Oliver noted, all sorts of services are available to users that show road backups. But the 511 services also have traffic camera views of backups, which Oliver said can give the user a better perspective on just how bad the traffic jam is and when it might ease.
“That visual really adds a lot more to the experience than just a red line on the highway,” Oliver said.
The 511 service also features such information as steep grades and live construction feeds. “And it’s not just on the highways,” Oliver said. “This goes all the way to the last mile.”
Pedigree Technologies
Pedigree Technologies describes itself as a telematics company that serves a wide range of industries. The product it rolled out at TCA is an AI-driven tool for predictive maintenance, where the AI can take a stream of data and draw a conclusion that a truck needs some sort of service and hopefully do that before a problem develops.
Rocco Marrari, head of sales at Pedigree, said the AI product, called PredictiveView, will “provide fleet managers with predictive insights and actionable data, enabling them to make informed decisions about maintenance before those issues arise.”
“We’re telling you exactly what needs to be done well ahead of time,” Marrari said. “So that fleet is able to pull that truck off the road to get these issues fixed, and you’re able to use that data going forward.”
Marrari described trucking as “probably the most reactive industry I’ve ever come across.” The sales pitch will be to avoid unexpected vehicle failures, which he said costs the industry billions every year.
PredictiveView, Marrari said, will use algorithms to “analyze vast amounts of historical and real-time vehicle data.” The system can “spot unusual patterns” coming off of its various components, and immediately provide advice on preventive maintenance before the issues get worse.
TruSygnal
Ed Burns at TruSygnal is not only the founder of that company with his father, also named Ed Burns, but is CEO of Burns Logistics.
There are echoes of digital brokerage offerings in TruSygnal’s product. But whereas digital brokerage systems were designed to hook up a carrier with a spot load, the idea behind TruSygnal, launched last year, is to connect shippers and carriers without the need for a broker.
“The relationship between shippers and carriers is broken,” Burns said. “It’s kind of like having a conversation with your significant other and every time you do, your mother in law is there having a conversation between you. There are lots of third parties who have gotten involved in the transactions between shippers and carriers.”
TruSygnal hopes to fill a gap in shippers’ knowledge, Burns said. “Shippers don’t necessarily know where small to midsized fleets operate,” he said. This is occurring even though shippers’ transportation procurement officers are being solicited by carriers hundreds of times per day.
Direct links between shippers and carriers “go a lot smoother. They see rate stability.” So the two Burns asked themselves, “Why don’t we see more of this?”
Although the younger Burns did not discuss the capabilities of the digital brokerage tools, what he described was similar, except that it is designed to bypass brokers completely. “The tool creates matches between the shipper and carrier,” he said. “It’s like a dating app for shippers and carriers to fall in love.”
Mastery Logistics
Like TruSygnal’s, this presentation was atypical because it was a new product, not an add-on. Mastery Logistics rolled out MasterMind TMS, which it said it has been working on for six years.
Danielle Prigge, chief commercial officer, said MasterMind was developed by Jeff and Marianne Silver, who started Coyote Logistics, which is now part of RXO (NYSE: RXO).
MasterMind is not a new launch. But Prigge said Mastery was presenting to the TCA because it had just reached 60,000 transactions on the platform, which she said the company viewed as a milestone.
“The industry was lacking a modern, cloud-based TMS (that was) cloud-native and cloud-delivered that can manage the entire life cycle with as much automation as possible,” Prigge said.
While a TMS operating in the cloud is not rare, Prigge said the fact there never needed to be a migration of MasterMind was a benefit. “You can be a bit more agile when you start in the cloud,” she said.
Prigge said Mastery now has 21 customers, and the smallest fleet it supports has more than 1,500 trucks.
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