Pricing and booking LTL freight without the phone chain
Quotes, bookings, and tracking lived in phone calls, email, and separate carrier portals, and markup depended on who worked the load. The brokerage now prices a load, applies its own rules, books it, and follows it through delivery from one system.
Client
LTL freight brokerage
Industry
Freight Brokerage
Timeline
Rating first, then booking and tracking
Key takeaway
A load can be priced, booked, and tracked in one place, with the same markup rule every time.
The desk priced freight the way a lot of brokerages still do. Someone called or emailed for a rate, worked the margin by hand, confirmed the booking on the phone, then checked a carrier portal when a customer asked where the freight was. Customers had no way to see their own shipments, so routine status questions came back to the same people who were trying to book the next load. We built a broker platform that pulls live rates, applies the brokerage's pricing rules, and keeps the quote, the booking, the pickup, and the paperwork on one shipment record.
The challenge
Pricing moved with whoever had the load that afternoon. A busy desk under-applied a margin, a careful one over-applied it, and neither result was easy to explain later. Booking and tracking sat in other systems, so a status check meant another login or another call. Customers waited on the brokerage for answers they should have been able to see themselves.
Margin by habit
Percentage, flat, tiered, and account-specific pricing lived with the person on the phone, not in a rule the next quote would follow.
A shipment with no home
The quote, the booking, the pickup, and the tracking update each lived somewhere else, so nobody could open one record and know where the load stood.
Customers in the queue
Shippers called in for a rate or a status update, and those calls competed with the work of actually moving freight.
What we built
The desk requests a live rate, sees options side by side, and lets the account's pricing rule set the customer price before anyone books. Booking, pickup, tracking, and documents stay on that same shipment. Billing reads from the booked load, so the invoice matches what was quoted and what moved.
- Live rate quoting with a side-by-side comparison before anyone commits
- Pricing rules by percentage, flat amount, tier, or account, applied the same way on every quote
- Digital booking against the carrier, without a second phone call to confirm
- Pickup scheduling and tracking on the same shipment record
- Shipment paperwork, including bills of lading, kept with the load
- Company accounts, role-based access, invoices, and customer statements
Before & after
Before
- Rates came back one carrier at a time, by phone or email
- Markup was applied by hand, and two people could price the same lane differently
- A status check meant a carrier portal or another call
After
- Rates come back inside the platform and can be compared before booking
- The account's pricing rule sets the customer price on every quote
- Staff and customers see status, pickup, and documents on the same record
Built with
Our approach
01
Audit
We sat with the desk and traced a load from the first rate request to the point a customer asked where it was.
02
Build
We shipped accounts and quoting first, then booking, pickup, tracking, documents, and billing.
03
Pilot
We proved rating, booking, and tracking on one carrier relationship before widening coverage.
04
Support
We add carrier connections and desk features as the book of business changes.
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