How Does Digital Booking Benefit Freight Brokers?

What is Digital Booking and How Does it Help Brokers?

Digital booking allows brokers to post a load on a load board and instead of initiating contact and proceeding with booking the freight more traditionally, the carrier can simply click a button to accept the load. It offers benefits for carriers, as well, but read on to learn about the benefits of digital booking for freight brokers.

It’s Faster than Traditional Booking

The most obvious benefit to digital booking for freight brokers is that it’s faster than traditional booking. It cuts down on the time spent negotiating rates, engaging with carriers over semantics, and relaying load details.

When loads get booked faster through automated processes like Book Now, brokers have more time to book even more loads. They can also invest that time in building carrier relationships, refining processes, or building out their book of business. Ultimately, that time saved can help brokers grow their businesses, increase revenues, and improve their level of service.

It Can Help Brokers Book Freight Ahead of Time

Life in a freight brokerage can be hectic. Just staying on top of the loads that need to be booked can be difficult enough; finding capacity for loads before it’s absolutely necessary goes way beyond what many broker reps can even imagine.

By setting up loads with competitive Book Now rates, brokers can aim to get freight booked in advance. When freight is booked out ahead of time, there’s less urgency. Brokers can avoid paying spot market rates when they don’t need to be hauled immediately.

It also means brokers can be a little pickier about the carriers they use to haul their loads and may be able to negotiate better margins on some loads.

It Helps Capture Capacity After Hours

97% of trucking companies in the US have fewer than 20 trucks and 90% have fewer than 6 trucks. That’s very relevant to the topic of digital booking because many of these small trucking companies and owner/operators with a single truck don’t have a dispatch staff standing behind them to get them on loads. They’re both driving and handling the paperwork and phone calls involved in booking their truck.

The FMCSA allows for a 14-hour workday. For truck drivers who do their driving during the day, that long workday could mean that they’re on the road for the entirety of a brokerage’s operating hours. Book Now loads allow brokers to make loads easy to book outside of their normal operating hours, so those drivers who can’t or prefer not to deal with load booking during the day can still have access to their loads.

It Can Help Brokers Build Their Capacity Network

When brokers show carriers loads where they want to see them and let them book how they want to book, they’re more likely to want to work with you again. The Parade system saves carriers who have taken loads for you in the past so you can send them loads that might be a match directly.

A simple Book Now can be the foundation of a new carrier relationship. The Book Now pulls them into the carrier network in Parade, opening the door for the broker to reach out about load preferences, availability, and simply getting to know the carrier reps on a more personal level.

Through integrations with our syndication partners, Parade allows customers to set up and manage digital bookings directly from our platform. This means they can post Book Now loads to multiple load boards at the same time to get their load in front of more carriers faster. Want to learn more about how Parade can help streamline the digital booking process? Fill out this form to set up a Parade demo.