Freight brokerage, automated
Guides for broker agencies on load data, load boards and missed carrier calls, and technical papers on how SmartLoads works under the hood. Numbers come from our production system.
For brokers and agencies
AI in freight brokerage: why a person still books every load
SmartLoads uses AI to answer carrier calls, read scanned paperwork and check shippers' confirmations, but a person books every load. Here's where AI earns its keep on a broker desk, where it doesn't, and the rule that keeps booking human.
For brokersFrom shipper paperwork to TMS entry in 22 seconds with the Cover Card
Covering a load means re-keying the customer's paperwork into the TMS. The SmartLoads Cover Card reads forwarded PDFs, matches them to the right load and lists every field in the TMS's own order. Here's how it works and how the matching avoids the wrong load.
For brokersHow to post loads to DAT and Truckstop without retyping them
Broker desks lose hours rebuilding load lists for DAT and Truckstop. Here's how automatic Truckstop posting through the API and one-minute DAT upload files work in practice, what should hold a load back, and numbers from 17,769 API postings.
For brokersHow to turn shipper load emails into a live load board automatically
Shippers send loads as email text, Excel attachments, scanned PDFs and Google Sheets. Here's how to turn all of them into one clean, deduplicated load board without retyping, with a real example and production numbers from 38,321 load postings.
For brokersWhat missed carrier calls cost a freight brokerage, and how AI answers them
On a measured day, 54% of inbound carrier calls to a broker desk were missed or sent to overflow. Here's what those calls are worth, what an AI phone agent should and shouldn't do on a freight line, and the numbers from 14,232 AI-answered calls.
For brokersAljex Big 500 import automation for broker load boards
How to get loads from the Aljex Big 500 report onto a live broker load board and out to Truckstop and DAT without re-keying or duplicates, including how to avoid double-posting customers that already have their own feed.
For brokersFreight broker load board vs TMS: what runs the operational day
Why broker desks need a live load board alongside Aljex or another TMS, what each system should own, and how to stop re-keying shipper spreadsheets into both.
For brokersShipper load sheet email best practices for broker desks
How shippers can send daily load sheets that brokers post faster and cover sooner, from columns and dates to re-sends and cancellations, and how broker desks can import whatever arrives.
Technical papers
Designing the SmartLoads Partner API with hashed keys, keyset cursors and atomic rate limits
How SmartLoads built a multi-tenant partner API on Supabase Edge Functions and PostgreSQL. It covers API key format and hashing, scopes that fail closed, explicit response shapes, keyset pagination, a race-free per-key rate limit in one SQL function, and serving it all from api.smartloads.io.
Technical paperFingerprint deduplication for load sheets that are re-sent all day
How SmartLoads keeps exactly one load posting per real load when shippers re-send the same emails and Google Sheets dozens of times a day. Covers fingerprint design, slot and row salts, tenant-scoped unique indexes, full-board sync with protected fields, and the mistakes that shaped it.
Technical paperReliable webhooks from Postgres triggers with an outbox, SKIP LOCKED and HMAC signatures
How SmartLoads sends webhooks for new carrier leads, lead-to-load matches, Cover Cards and bookings, without slowing down or ever failing the writes that trigger them. It covers trigger design, a delivery outbox, SKIP LOCKED claiming, retries, signatures, SSRF defense and Slack delivery.