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.
“The more you do freight with a carrier, the more trust you have … If they've worked together before, they already have established that trust on understanding the procedures … but also the broker is there to help their end customer as well in driving towards a smooth fulfillment operation,” Sutardja said. “What I mean by that is some of the brokers know acutely well that the dock hours at this specific facility are flexible, and they can call the docking appointment manager to really push and give with the carrier because maybe the carrier is running behind, and they really need to get rescheduled, and they don't want to wait another 24 hours for the dock to reopen.”
And once those relationships are built, he said carriers have more certainty in receiving freight opportunities, allowing them to better plan.
That includes small, lesser-known carriers and owner operators. Sutardja said Parade helps its broker customers find new carriers wherever they do business. For example, the company reaches owner operators via its integration partner CloudTrucks.
“Parade drives towards carrier reuse in two angles: for the (brokers) that already have a great, healthy relationship with their core carriers, we help automate that and drive it towards more efficiencies so that these carriers can do more freight with their existing trusted broker partners; and for the carriers that the broker doesn't know well, we enable the broker to more quickly develop relationships with these carriers and help to turn them into a long-term recurring relationship.”