For brokers and agencies
Playbooks for taking a shipper's loads from the inbox to a covered truck.
24 articles
Carriers want to talk to a person. How do I answer every call?
Carriers call to talk to a person, not a script. Why phone bots lose them, what missed calls cost a freight agent, and how to answer every call, people first.
My load board isn't tied into Aljex. Do I retype every load?
Your load board and Aljex don't talk, so every booked load gets typed in twice. Why that happens, what retyping costs, and how to fill Aljex without an API.
Nobody else should see my customer list. How do I keep it private?
Freight agents want their customers kept to themselves. Why shared boards show everyone everything, what that risks, and how to pick who sees each customer.
Putting the loads in eats my whole morning. How do I stop retyping?
Customers send loads as spreadsheets, PDFs and emails, and someone retypes them all. Why load entry eats the morning, what it costs, and how to stop retyping.
The carrier's over my max on a same-day load. Who decides?
A same-day load needs a truck and the carrier asks for more than your max. Why tools get that call wrong, what it costs, and how to keep the decision yours.
Why do I have to unpost and repost just to change a rate?
A rate change shouldn't mean deleting your load board post and starting over. Why agents end up reposting, what stale posts cost, and how to change it once.
Freight agent office vs brokerage back office: who does what
A freight agent runs customers and carriers under a broker's authority, and the brokerage runs the bond, credit, billing and carrier pay. Who owns which job.
How often to post and refresh loads on DAT and Truckstop
When to post a load, when to refresh it and when to pull it on DAT and Truckstop, with DAT's own refresh and expiry rules and what an automated board does.
How to get loads from customer emails onto DAT and Truckstop fast
Every minute between a customer's load email and a live posting costs calls. Where those minutes go, how to measure them, and how to cut the gap to the import.
Keying loads into Aljex faster with copy fields and a fill extension
Order entry is the slowest job on many Aljex desks. Read the paperwork once, lay the fields out in Aljex's order, and let an extension fill the form for you.
Outlook for freight brokers: rules, shared inboxes and a load panel
Most broker desks run on Outlook. Set up a shared loads inbox, rules, categories and Quick Steps, then add a panel that reads email paperwork into load data.
Rate confirmation vs notice of release vs BOL: what each document does
A rate con, a notice of release, a bill of lading and a POD each do a different job. Who issues each one, who signs it, and which can reach a carrier.
Truckstop Rate Insights for brokers: a market rate next to every load
What Truckstop Rate Insights estimates, where its data comes from, and how to read the predicted rate and range next to a load before offering carrier pay.
From 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.
How to get loads onto a load board when your TMS has no export
Many broker TMSs, including Aljex, have no bulk push to DAT or Truckstop, so brokers re-key loads. Here are the realistic ways to get loads out (report exports, screen capture, vendor APIs and EDI), what each costs, and why the best fix is often to capture loads before they reach the TMS.
How 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.
How 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.
Lane alerts that text carriers the loads they asked for
Carriers who call about a lane will often want the next load on it. Here's how SmartLoads lane alerts work by text and email, from opt-in and matching to caps, quiet hours and STOP handling, with honest early numbers.
SI in freight brokerage: why a person still books every load
SmartLoads uses super intelligence (SI) to answer carrier calls, read scanned paperwork and check shippers' confirmations, but a person books every load. Here's where SI earns its keep on a broker desk, where it doesn't, and the rule that keeps booking human.
What a freight broker agency should automate first
A practical order for automating a broker desk, based on one agency's production numbers. Start with load intake, then posting, then the missed carrier calls posting creates, then paperwork. Measure before you buy, and keep booking human.
What missed carrier calls cost a freight brokerage, and how SI 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 a super intelligence (SI) phone agent should and shouldn't do on a freight line, and the numbers from 14,232 SI-answered calls.
Aljex 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.
Freight 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.
Shipper 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.