Transfix partners with Rocket Shipping for LTL offering

Digital freight marketplace Transfix announced Thursday that it has partnered with transportation provider Rocket Shipping to provide customers with a new less-than-truckload booking feature.

“Our partnership with Rocket Shipping leverages their deep expertise in LTL and final-mile services, integrating this knowledge directly into Transfix’s Shipper App and combining it with our decade of experience in full truckload,” Jonathan Salama, co-founder and CEO of Transfix, told FreightWaves. “This collaboration brings efficiency and effectiveness to the freight operations of small and midsize businesses and midmarket shippers that we believe have been underserved.”

Salama notes that small and midsize shippers frequently resort to manual booking processes for their LTL shipments. But this approach opens the door to inefficiencies and errors, such as inadvertent residential deliveries and incorrect equipment bookings. Such mistakes can result in unexpected costs for the shippers.

Moreover, these shippers often face challenges in securing competitive rates due to their lower shipping volumes and limited negotiating power. Additionally, complex claims and damages resolution processes negatively impact customer satisfaction and add to shipping costs.

“Looking ahead, we believe this partnership with Rocket Shipping will not only help solve multiple pain points these shippers face, but also spark significant innovation and growth within the industry,” Salama said. “Specifically, we see the potential to increase access to advanced shipping tools for small and midsize businesses, as well as the opportunity to drive sustainability through load consolidation and empty mile reduction. Ultimately, all to enable these smaller players to compete on a more level playing field.”

Gabe Pankonin, CEO of Rocket Shipping, envisions partnerships like this as the future of the “integrated marketplace approach.” In this model, companies concentrate on their specialties, such as full-truckload logistics for Transfix and LTL for Rocket Shipping, while collaborating to provide customers with a comprehensive logistics solution through a single platform for managing their shipments.

“Transfix’s Shipper app will begin to democratize access to the best companies in each sector,” Pankonin explained. “Shippers have historically had to compromise expertise and pricing power for convenience. They have used big-box brokerages to manage all modes in one platform. … The shippers will benefit by being able to access each of these companies and modes in one platform without having ‘all their eggs in one basket,’ so to speak.”