Each and every carrier interaction leaves behind little clues. Whether you receive a quote or a driver’s location or a description of what equipment the carrier uses or its favorite lanes, brokers can learn a lot from bits and pieces of information.
Historically, brokers haven’t collected this data. Why? Well, they simply lacked the time and the tools to save such insights.
Things are further complicated by tribal knowledge silos that form when the same carrier works with different people at the brokerage, making relationships difficult to formulate. At best, a carrier can hope that a broker saves its information on a spreadsheet, but that’s about as reliable as exchanging business cards.
This ultimately slows down the booking process. What’s more, as conversations dart back and forth among team members about prospective carriers, other carrier quotes go unnoticed or ignored.
It’s hard to quantify the relationships you couldn’t create because you forgot about a carrier’s preferences. If only it were possible to never forget a carrier.
Parade, the leader in software for freight brokers, is now keeping tabs on every carrier, learning
more with every interaction received to better match brokers with the right carriers.
“Parade has built a system that ties it all together so that you’ll never forget a carrier, what equipment they have, what they like to run and where they like to go,” said Lindsay Watt, Parade’s vice president of product, explaining that the platform derives lane preferences and other information from connections both within and outside a broker’s network.
Carrier preferences, including desired lanes, equipment type and even accessorials, special equipment and certifications, are updated in real time, ensuring brokers always have the most current capacity outlook.
“An enormous amount of time and energy is spent talking to carriers and learning what they like today — and then it’s all relearned tomorrow because brokerages don’t have a simple way of capturing this data,” Watt said. Describing the broker’s process as akin to the movie “Groundhog Day,” he says similar frustrations arise daily — constant calls with carriers and an endless stream of quotes and the same process repeating daily.
No one has been able to piece together all the clues until now.
Keeping track of every interaction, Parade constructs profiles behind the scenes on each carrier so that brokers can see who’s most interested in their loads on the platform’s Source Search task bar.
Every carrier interaction is a nugget of information, which is why each quote, carrier search, location update or trailer information received holds intrinsic value that, when amalgamated, unveils greater insight into carrier preferences.
Say you’re wanting to cover a load from Chicago to Tampa, Florida. When a carrier quotes on this lane in particular, regardless of whether it’s in your network, Parade keeps it on file.
“If they quote on that lane again, perhaps they quote on it a week later, that’s another clue the carrier might be interested in running this lane on a consistent basis,” Watt said. Without Parade, “you don’t see the patterns happening on a weekly basis when you’re a carrier rep deep in the trenches.”
Considering recent capacity volatility and how difficult it has become to reutilize carriers, Parade’s ability to gauge interest from qualified carriers ensures no opportunities go unnoticed.
Nobody wins with one-off transactions — it’s too expensive for brokers and shippers can barely tolerate it. But this AI-enabled solution satisfies all, not only making it easier to get loads covered quickly and successfully book more loads, but also boosting carrier reuse and long-term relationships from the get-go.
With Parade, no carrier is forgotten.
Click for more FreightWaves content by Jack Glenn.
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