One load wonders: shining a light on dark capacity

Did you know that over 90% of your qualified carriers vanish into the dark after they deliver your load? Prasad Gollapalli, founder and CEO of Trucker Tools, described the importance of the search for smart capacity in a conversation with Adrian Gonzalez. “If you ask any broker, they have thousands of carriers that are qualified in their system and over 90% of those carriers are ‘one load wonders.’ A carrier picks up a load for a broker, delivers the load, and once they deliver the load, the broker has no idea when the carrier is available in the future for any of his loads,” Gollapalli explained. Essentially, the amount of time put into the carrier is disproportionate to the reward: hours and hours are spent finding the carrier for a single load to be delivered. 

“If you look at the traditional brokerage today, they’re making calls, in most cases, about 30-60 calls to cover a load. They’re scrambling this information from sources such as load boards, emails, spreadsheets, phone calls, and what they’re doing is they’re handling a lot of stale information,” said Gollapalli. 

“For example, you’re a broker calling a carrier, you probably saw this carrier on a load board. By the time you call the carrier, they’re not available. The underlying problem behind that is stale, historical information,” Gollapalli continued. 

When you look at a brokerage, the biggest thing that everybody is talking about is the need for more carriers “[Adding more trucks and drivers] is like hemorrhaging blood out of one arm and putting blood back into the other arm to try and counter it,” Gollapalli said. “We all know that’s not an efficient solution.” 

“What we need is a platform where you can know not only where the truck is, but, in confidence, you can say that the truck will be available in the future. “You need a dynamic mobile platform where you can constantly check the future availability of these trucks.”  

That’s where Smart Capacity comes in. Launched in September 2017, Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity eliminates these one load wonders, allowing users to reconnect with these carriers and regularly move freight with them. It’s a freight matching and capacity management tool that bridges the gap between brokers and carriers, giving both the visibility they need to get the job done.  

 “With Smart Capacity, you can convert that ‘one load wonder’ into repeat business,” he adds. “Now you get multiple loads out of that carrier and thus, spread that initial cost to find and qualify a carrier over many loads — not just one. Additionally, you also reduce the number of calls to cover a load as you work with real-time, available information. As a result, the cost of covering each load goes down significantly with Smart Capacity.” 

Smart Capacity allows for real-time driver connectivity and up-to-date data that not only collates capacity, but predicts it. The platform app is also incredibly secure. According to Trucker Tools, Smart Capacity is built on the latest cutting-edge technology that focuses on securing and protecting your confidentiality and allows you to conduct business with your carriers on a private network. 

After almost a year on the market, Smart Capacity recently signed-up its 50th freight broker customer. It’s mobile app, introduced in 2013, has hit 500,000 downloads from truckers.  And this month, the Trucker Tools platform surpassed 100,000 carriers actively participating on the network.  The horse race in the digital freight marketplace is heating up! Learn more about Trucker Tools and Smart Capacity here.