Transportation Management Made Easy
Transportation Management Software (TMS) is at the core of most freight brokerage operations. TMS can rate shipments, dispatch loads, and use electronic tracking to give an Amazon experience to delight customers.
At 3PL Systems we like to build our TMS to innovate based on trends we are seeing in the market. Our software development team is agile delivering new software enhancements to solve real-world problems.
Plug and play with up to 60 different carriers using 3PL Systems proprietary API for 60 different carriers for Less Than Truckload (LTL) rating, e-dispatching, tracking, and document retrieval.
No need to contact a support rep to set up these services simply plug in your credentials. We are constantly adding to this list as carriers develop this technology. We make freight brokerage easy.
Running an efficient freight brokerage is key to being profitable. Give your shippers the convenience of electronically accepting your rate quote native in BrokerWare TMS. Say goodbye to printing, signing, scanning, uploading, and emailing back. Convenience is a competitive advantage.
We have the same ability for your carriers to accept your freight shipment via electronic signature. If you’re interested in learning more of the innovative features our engineers are working on contact us for a demo.
It’s not every day we get to speak with a founder that’s innovating an entire industry. We were lucky enough to pick Craig Fuller’s brain learning all about the FreightWaves founding story.
We found out that Craig’s dad started U.S. Express, which Craig’s brother runs as the CEO with 10,000 + employees. Craig ended up working with his dad at one point on a payments venture which caused tensions within the Fuller family.
Craig got interested in markets day trading and came up with an idea to start FreightWaves by creating a data product and then covering topics in the freight market to give context to their data.
Craig’s dad initially didn’t invest in FreightWaves, but it came full circle when Craig got to interview his father Max on Fuller Speed Ahead. There’s a ton of learnings in this episode as Craig is a true pioneer in the logistics industry.
3PL Systems Team
In this episode of 3PL Live, host Jeremy Thone speaks with Richard Harris™ of The Harris Consulting group about the art of mastering inside sales.
Richard is one of the most influential sales leaders in the software industry with clients such as Google, Visa, and SalesLoft. He teaches sales reps how to ask the right questions at the right times.
We talk about impostor syndrome, sales automation programs, and mental health. Thanks for listening. We appreciate the support, and please share, like, and comment if you enjoyed it.
3PL Systems Team
At 3PL Systems, we make Transportation Management Software with a lot of moving parts. We hire talented U.S. based technical support representatives to support our client base.
We appreciate the contributions of our team. In this episode of 3PL Live, we turn the spotlight on our staff and speak with Blake Rangell about supporting our clients with EDI 204, 210, 214, and API tracking/tracing.
We also talk about some popular integrations, including Hubtran for process automation and DAT onboarding.
3PL Team
3PL Systems is excited to share a founding story in the transportation community.
In this 3PL Live episode, we speak with Tristan Bordallo of Iamfr8 INC about leaving a comfortable role at Covenant Transportation to starting an asset-based trucking company with no financing, trucks, or drivers.
Tristan realized that one way to fix the driver shortage in the industry is to pay the drivers fair wages; his drivers make 75k a year. Iiamfr8 treats drivers so well. Tristan has more drivers than trucks, with 4 more drivers wanting to come on board.
If you like entrepreneurship and salesmanship, this is a great story worth checking out.
Click here to listen to the episode.
3PL Systems Team
At 3PL systems, we enjoy highlighting entrepreneurs in the supply chain and their founding stories through our podcast 3PL Live.
In this episode of 3PL Live, Chris Wilson from Rise Transportation shares his entrepreneurship story about bootstrapping a 3PL right before the pandemic hit!
Chris shut down his freight brokerage for two whole months during the pandemic but weathered the storm. Rise Transportation is expecting a strong Q4 with several hundred shipments in the books.
We talk about entrepreneurship, marketing, and running a small business.
If you’re in the freight brokerage business, having a reliable partner in Transportation Management Software (TMS) can increase your revenue potential.
Check out our Marketing Manager, Jeremy Thone’s segment on FreightWave’s “What the Truck?” with hosts Dooner and The Dude. At 30:38, Thone plays it forward with a self-composed tune leading into speaking about the innovative culture 3PL Systems’ CEO is building with his team of engineers. Be sure to catch the bit about ShipMind. This integration can automatically advance a shipment through rating, choosing the carrier, dispatching the load, and pushing through to invoiced.
A recent article out of Logistics Management had something very interesting to say about TMS adoption in small-to-medium-sized companies (which includes most freight brokerages).
Here’s what the article had to say:
“Historically, TMS adoption rates for smaller shippers have hovered in the 10% range, according to De Muynck, while about 25% of medium-sized firms and 50% of large organizations used the application to manage their freight activities.
“These adoption rates are now rising thanks to the fact that most TMSs are now available in the Cloud and on a subscription-based model. ‘Recently, we’ve seen about 15% growth in TMS usage within the small- to mid-sized businesses market.’”
If you’re a new freight broker trying to break into the industry, or even if you’re an experienced broker who’s always hovered around the small-to-medium market, this means that the competition is starting to gain a technological advantage, and they’re doing so quickly.
Cloud TMS services, like our flagship product, BrokerWare™, allow the little guys to get a leg up on the competition. It used to be the case that small brokers were basically competing with each other on the basis of customer service — there just wasn’t a big difference price-wise or quality wise between different freight brokers.
Even 10 years ago, dealing with a TMS, the management of which and the implementation of which could be costly, time consuming, and of unclear value to the few small brokers who could afford it, was just not something that made a whole lot of sense.
Even in the mid market, you just didn’t see it very often — the price was high, training was a nightmare, and unless you had a huge list of recurring clients, it wasn’t even something you really needed.
That’s all changed now thanks to cloud-based TMSs.
Nowadays, many smaller freight brokers are adopting TMSs, often before they even get up and running, which allows them to be highly efficient from the get go and to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Now, I do want to take a step back here and make it clear that this only applies to paid TMSs — free TMSs just aren’t robust enough to help you set yourself apart.
That being said, one of the biggest factors that used to keep small-to-medium-sized businesses from adopting a TMS was the need for training — day-to-day TMS management just wasn’t something you could pick up easily, the systems were clunky for a long time, and getting buy-in from staff could be a nightmare, especially as you got towards the mid end of the small-to-mid market.
But it’s not 2003 anymore — we’ve come a long way, and
Simpler is better, especially if you already have a lot of employees. The last thing you want to do is to have to undergo weeks or months of training sessions, which not only can cost you up front, but which also costs you in lost productivity.
The truth is, a quality system, especially a cloud-based system that isn’t going to require a huge investment upfront, is going to be easier to implement. When it comes to a TMS, management needs to be as simple and straightforward as possible, and the less you have to manage on-site (and the more your TMS provider is managing on their end), the fewer problems you have to worry about.
As it stands now, a TMS is something that can really set you apart. For most freight brokers, it’s difficult to compete on price, it’s difficult to compete on quality, most of your customers view you as a commodity, and even providing excellent customer service can be just enough to keep people from hating you.
It’s sad, but it’s the truth.
All of this means one thing — you need to be as efficient as possible in order to make a buck.
A TMS is one of the few ways you can really achieve higher levels of efficiency. Many brokers find that they can reduce staffing levels by using a TMS.
They also find that they can more regularly achieve higher profit margins because the TMS quickly and efficiently compares clients and carriers.
Add to that auto-generated paperwork and a reduction in the amount of data entry required (which reduces errors), and you can see why more and more brokers are adopting TMSs.
If you’re ready to become a more efficient and effective broker, we’d love to help.
Contact us today to find out how our TMS BrokerWare™ can help you jumpstart your business.
[contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]