When a trucking company or owner operator sends emails to brokers with their truck availability, oftentimes those emails go into a black hole and are never seen. That’s bad news for the broker and the hauler.
But Parade, a software provider that helps freight brokers digitize operations, reads all those emails automatically for its broker customers, enabling them to process that carrier into their system. One of the company’s primary goals is carrier reuse, and while its focus is on the broker side, carriers can benefit as well.
Parade pulls data – a driver’s location, description of equipment, preferred lanes, etc. – from its more than 20 capacity management integration partners, including Trucker Path, DAT Freight & Analytics and, most recently, 3PL Systems. The data is used to build carrier profiles based on the carrier’s preferences so a broker can select the right carrier for a load. Better carrier profiles let brokers personalize a list of loads available to each carrier, saving the carrier time and effort.
Parade Co-founder and CEO Anthony Sutardja said the software offers carriers new business leads, helping them keep their trucks on the road making money, and helps brokers build relationships with those carriers so they can book more loads.
“That reuse – once there's an established relationship – really enables this trust between the broker and carrier to work together and enable them to move more freight together but in a way that doesn't add friction to the process and doesn't result in a truck having to be moved empty,” he said. “We think that by enabling the brokers to establish more relationships, that is better business for the carrier. That's better business for the broker as well and really helps the industry move along more efficiently,” which is much needed amid supply chain issues and driver shortages.
As brokers ship more freight with a certain carrier, Sutardja said it saves carriers and brokers time that they’re not spending on the phone negotiating and onboarding, which comes at a cost on both sides. He said the “pre-baked trust” that comes with carrier reuse accelerates communication and enables carriers to self-book freight.
He said the broker-carrier relationship also benefits carriers’ uptime because brokers can negotiate on behalf of the carrier to keep freight moving.
