Another player has jumped onto the field in the fast-growing digital freight matching (DFM) sector, as fleet management technology provider KeepTruckin on Tuesday launched a “smart load board” that connects its network of truck drivers with an array of freight brokers.
The move is the latest expansion of new products from San Francisco-based KeepTruckin, which landed a massive, $149 million venture capital investment in 2019 and said it would use the funds to accelerate the development of this Smart Load Board online freight-matching tool. Now launched, the tool aggregates thousands of loads from KeepTruckin’s partners and surfaces them directly in its platform, allowing both dedicated brokers and trucking companies with brokerage divisions to contact KeepTruckin’s pool of over 1 million registered drivers.
KeepTruckin’s announcement came a day after Transfix—another well-funded provider of digital freight matching services—likewise launched a software product to expand its footprint in the sector. But while fleet management system provider KeepTruckin added a freight matching tool, Transfix grew in the opposite direction by adding a fleet management program to its existing digital brokerage platform.
According to Transfix, its new “Fleet Planner” tool gives small and mid-sized carriers access to a free, centralized platform for managing fleets. New York-based Transfix says that dispatchers at small to mid-sized carriers struggle with many of the same complexities as the large carriers—such as managing driver schedules and preferences, organizing key load information, and communicating with drivers—but budget constraints force them to do the job without the appropriate technology. That increases the risk they can miss loads, hurt relationships with customers, or waste truck capacity, the company said.
Likewise, KeepTruckin’s Smart Load Board is a free product, embedded directly in the firm’s Fleet Dashboard and Driver App products. It uses data science and machine learning algorithms to analyze drivers’ needs and preferences, then automatically matches the right jobs to the right carriers, providing drivers with details about rate, commodity, and weight to help carriers make informed decisions, the company said.
Partners that are posting loads to Smart Load Board include: Echo Global Logistics, Uber Freight, Convoy, Edge Logistics, Bennett, EPES Logistics, Page Trucking, Keller Freight Solutions, and any broker powered by Parade. “We are always looking for ways to expand our digital network and simplify the way we interact with our carrier partners," Dave Menzel, president and COO at Echo, said in a release. "We are excited to partner with KeepTruckin's Smart Load Board, as it will allow Echo to continue to increase our access to capacity for our shippers."
In a video announcing the launch, Keep Truckin said the new tool makes it into a one-stop shop for trucking companies, that can now use a single provider to access electronic logging device (ELD) compliance, driver safety, global positioning system (GPS) tracking, and now freight matching.
