Shippers now have a new tool to help them respond to cost changes in real time. Shipping intelligence platform Reveel has introduced Reveel IQ, an AI-powered solution that provides natural language access to shipping data.
Reveel Co-founder and CEO Josh Dunham said the Reveel IQ platform connects directly to carrier accounts and other shipping data sources to ingest both invoice and shipment data, and it understands the nuances of carrier billing and cost structures. It acts as an overlay or complementary intelligence layer, enabling a unified view with deeper insights and more actionable intelligence across carriers, contracts and systems.
“In today’s environment of volatile carrier pricing, rising surcharges and ongoing margin pressure, shipping has become both more expensive and significantly more complex. That’s why it’s so important to put powerful tools like modeling, simulation, auditing and analytics directly in the hands of shippers,” Dunham said. “When those capabilities are accessible, they fundamentally change how decisions are made. Instead of relying on analysts, spreadsheets or time-consuming SQL queries, teams can respond to cost changes in real time.”
He said that modeling and simulation layer allows shippers to test different scenarios, such as a rate increase or a carrier shift, before committing, helping them avoid costly missteps.
The platform, which relies on package- and SKU-level shipment and invoice data, not only summarizes what happened but also explains why it happened. The user can ask the platform shipping questions in plain English, and each response includes a transparent breakdown of cost drivers. Users can also explore scenarios, validate results and bring insights into operational and financial decision-making.
Every response also provides shippers with decision-ready outputs, including visualizations, impact analyses and recommended next steps without requiring an analyst to manually build a report as the platform is designed to adapt its responses, delivering insights in plain language based on role and level of expertise.
Finance teams gain instant cost visibility, variance explanations and forecasting support. Transportation and supply chain leaders can perform root-cause analysis and optimize carrier and service strategies. And operations teams can identify exception drivers, packaging issues and execution inconsistencies.
“These tools make insights accessible across the organization. They’re no longer locked within data teams. Finance, operations and logistics can all act on them immediately,” Dunham said. “Ultimately, this shifts shipping from being a reactive cost center to a proactive, data-driven lever for profitability and strategic decision-making.”
Dunham said while the platform is primarily designed for shippers, there are indirect and emerging use cases for carriers as well.
One example he offered is performance transparency. The platform, he said, offers better visibility into delivery performance, service levels and cost drivers, making it easier to identify where a carrier may be under- or over-performing.
He added that data-driven insight also supports more effective contract structuring.
“Carriers can work with shippers to create pricing agreements that are not only competitive but also sustainable over time, and as shippers optimize things like packaging, service mix and routing, that can improve overall network efficiency for carriers as well,” Dunham said.
Carriers can also benefit from working with shippers who have a clearer understanding of their data, leading to more productive negotiations and fewer disputes because both sides are aligned on the numbers, he added.
“When we discuss the complexities of carrier shipping data, it certainly includes surcharges, detention fees and accessorials, but it goes much deeper than that,” he said. “There’s the sheer volume and structure of the data itself.”
There are dynamic surcharges like fuel, peak and residential delivery fees that can change frequently, sometimes with very little notice, he said. Additionally, there’s dimensional pricing, where factors like DIM weight and divisors can significantly impact the billed weight compared to the actual weight of a shipment. And then there’s a wide range of other accessorial charges like address corrections, delivery area surcharges, oversize fees, etc.
Different carriers, services and agreements all come with their own rates, discounts and tiers, he added.
“Invoices can contain millions of line items, each with multiple cost components, alongside performance metrics like on-time delivery, transit variability, and exception handling,” Dunham said. “All of this data is fragmented across multiple carriers — UPS, FedEx, DHL, regionals — each with their own formats and standards. All of these layers make it extremely difficult for generic analytics tools to interpret shipping data accurately, which is why a purpose-built solution is so critical.”
Reveel IQ offers more than a chat interface layered on top of a general-purpose database, he said; it is built with deep domain expertise and contextual awareness of each customer's shipping profile, enabling users to understand high-level trends to individual shipment details based on their own data without building reports or navigating dashboards.
