Highway, the fast-growing freight tech provider focused on preventing fraud, is integrating its system into one of the largest providers of transportation management systems (TMS) for small to medium businesses (SMBs).
AscendTMD and Highway announced this week that Highway’s Carrier Identity and LoadLock products will be available through AscendTMS. Jessie Thomas, vice president of marketing at Highway, said in an email to FreightWaves that the partnership with AscendTMS expands Highway’s reach in a meaningful way.”
“Embedding Highway’s Carrier Identity and LoadLock solutions inside AscendTMS means SMB brokers have access to the same advanced fraud prevention and compliance tools trusted by the industry’s largest brokerages,” he said.
Improving on an existing product
In an email to FreightWaves, Tim Higham, AscendTMS CEO, said his company’s TMS previously did have fraud prevention tools, including a proprietary product called Carrier Qualification and Verification.
“However, the fraud game has changed and become much more sophisticated,” Higham said. “Highway asked us to help them create a specific solution designed for the SMB broker and carrier that wanted the same anti-fraud protection as the largest brokers have, but in a simple one click access SMB solution within AscendTMS.”
The monthly cost to access Highway within AscendTMS is $349, Higham said. There is no additional cost for access charged by AscendTMS.
That figure includes the Highway LoadLock solution. Highway has described LoadLock as “(establishing) a carrier’s true identity and secures your business transactions with the carrier before it can be qualified to pick up one of your loads.”
Higham said 56 existing AscendTMS customers have been waiting for Highway integration after specifically asking the company for it. “I’d be disappointed if we didn’t see 500+ brokers using Highway in AscendTMS in the first 180 days,” he added.
“We were told that many solutions on the market are priced too high for SMB’s. or they are lacking in key areas of defense as the bad guys get more and more sophisticated,” Higham told FreightWaves. “It became clear that as Highway was already trusted by the vast majority of the largest brokers and 3PL’s in the market, the SMB players all wanted to use it. But, they needed it at a price they could afford.”
Year-long effort
Highway and AscendTMS worked on the product for more than a year, Higham said, “and the first batch of brokers that were given early access were blown away with how tightly knit it is into their daily operations within AscendTMS.”
Highway’s products can be accessed directly from the company, Thomas said. But “partnering with TMS providers like AscendTMS gives brokers an easier way to adopt our platform within their existing workflows.”
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