Finding a Load: Brokers Use New Tools to Manage Capacity as Freight Shipments Continue to Increase

This story appears in the July 12 print edition of Transport Topics.

As the recession appears to be waning and freight shipments increase, trucking-related firms such as the Allen Lund Cos. say they are seeing a shift in the loads-procurement marketplace, while others — including Con-way’s brokerage unit — are turning to new technological formats to find cargo in need of transportation.

“During the recession, it was all about finding a load — any load — and now we are seeing a very dramatic shift,” said David Schrader, senior vice president of TransCore, which operates a load board that is posting a fivefold increase in trucks offered for loading on its freight-matching service. “We’ve shifted from a buyer’s to a seller’s market. It happened suddenly, starting about three months ago.”

Whether you’re a carrier, broker or driver, the twin forces of a stronger economy and new technology are powering fundamental changes in the freight-finding pro-cess. Shipments in Class 8 trucks will rise 5% this year to 680 million loads, based on consultant FTR

Associates’ estimates. Simultaneously, load finding has appeared on the Twitter social networking site and Apple’s iPhone in a bid to speed up and simplify the process.

Eddie Lund, vice president of the Allen Lund Cos., is seeing the market shift firsthand at the brokerage that handles nearly 300,000 freight shipments annually.

“From a sales standpoint, things are much better,” Lund told Transport Topics. “The easiest time to go after new business is when capacity is tight, when there are more available loads and more freight is being left on the docks. When capacity is loose, as it was all the way through 2009, it was hard to get an appointment to see shippers.”

“Now we are going back to existing customers and seeing how much business we can retain from shippers who stuck with us during the recession,” said Ed Ruhe, vice president of Classic Carriers Inc., Versailles, Ohio, whose volume has risen 12% so far in 2010. “We want to secure the long-term customers’ business first. Over the past two years, we were focused on finding new accounts to get business.”

Meanwhile, Con-way’s brokerage unit is turning to Twitter to post loads where drivers can easily find them.

“We thought it would give us a really nice head start on adoption of the technology,” said Tom Nightingale, vice president of communications at parent company Con-way, whose multimodal unit is offering TweetLoad.

“It allows us to deliver the content in the form that is structured and accessible,” he said.

At the same time, companies such as PCS Software Inc. and Getloaded.com are showcasing load-finding services on iPhone that are aimed at independent drivers.

“It’s a pretty unique tool,” said Sean Van Dyck, sales manager for PCS, The Woodlands, Texas. “The iPhone load finder can search from the driver’s current location, or where they are headed. It will bring back loads within a specific radius.”

Other information such as safety scores and insurance are also shown to help match drivers and loads, he added.

Van Dyck explained that PCS offers the new tool as part of an effort to broaden the software company’s relationship with Apple that it will leverage with additional applications for the iPhone.

At the same time, Getloaded.com is offering an iPhone application that technology director Eddie Peloke described as “making the process easier and faster” by simply touching the phone’s screen. Before, he explained, drivers would have to log on and search the company’s website to find loads.

“What we want to continue to focus on is to make this process simple and fast,” he said. “We can save drivers a lot of searches.”

Peloke said he anticipated that the use of so-called smart phones will continue to grow, enhancing the value of that approach to load finding.

While the latest technology is being explored and exploited, the economic pickup is changing load boards, the industry’s freight-finding workhorses.

“The way the [load-board] service is offered hasn’t changed,” Schrader said. “What has changed is the way the service is used. As loads proliferate, I won’t just post my truck. I’ll look for a load to a particular place and price [it] first, and then I’ll post my truck for loading.”

“There is a lot more spot freight out there as rates go up,” said Lund, whose firm uses the electronic services to find trucks. “In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to post a load; you’d have all the relationships set up. That isn’t always reality.”

No matter what electronic approach is used, speed matters.

“As loads become more plentiful, the good freight still goes quickly,” said Schrader, whose firm offers an alerting service when a load is posted that meets carriers’ desired criteria.

Load boards can create other opportunities.

“There are histories to look at in those load boards,” said Tim Bray, president of Breck Logistics, a brokerage in Evansville, Ind. “You want to look for freight that moves on a regular basis.”

Lund said his La Canada, Calif., firm uses them to advertise its service to smaller carriers that brokers often use.

For some, load boards are far from the first choice in finding loads.

“Once we are outside of our customer network, we use load boards to fill lanes,” said Classic Carriers’ Ruhe, who added that his company gets about 7% of its loads from those boards. “The key we look for is how quickly we can get back to a headhaul market.

“Obviously, we look at the rate and the credit of companies posting loads,” he said. “We want to be sure we get paid.”

Ron Massman, president of The Dependable Companies, Los Angeles, said his trucking business uses load boards only if the firm can’t find freight from its own contacts and customers.

“We try to work with carriers on a regular or semi-regular basis,” he said. “If we can’t get any support from those carriers . . . we will go to load boards.”

As business improves, finding the right load continues to be a key goal, said Atlanta-based Manhattan Associates’ Mike Glasgow.

“It’s important to focus on two things: maximizing profitability and at the same time making sure you keep your network balanced,” the carrier account executive said. The most profitable load might be Chicago to Atlanta for a headhaul, but if you’re not balanced, why send more freight there?”

Manhattan Associates’ yield management product is designed to show what business will maximize profit, using scenarios required by carriers with complex freight networks, such as those on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers of the United States and Canada.

“Part of the algorithm and science behind this is looking at what that truck does on that network,” Glasgow said. “What are the permutations? What should the truck do at the next destination to feed that network?”

To enhance that process, he said, the company has added a feature to access where trucks will become available after they are dispatched with a load.

Load planners especially want to know that information, he explained, as capacity tightens and finding trucks becomes more difficult.

“The pendulum has swung in the trucker’s favor,” Glasgow said. “The new solution drives utilization to increase before you have to add capital. It’s the smarter way to optimize.”

Staff Writer Dan Leone contributed to this report.