Why Your Brokerage Needs Capacity Management this Holiday Season

Parade Capacity Management Helps Brokers Cope with the Holiday Rush

Capacity Management Helps Your Reps Do More in Less Time

A freight brokerage isn’t a department store. You can’t easily pick up some extra help for the holiday season. It takes too long to train new reps to hire them as temps. So how can brokerages account for the extra work that comes along with the extra holiday loads? They could ask reps to work overtime, or they could add capacity management to streamline processes and automate much of the busy work that absorbs so much of reps’ time.

This allows the reps you have to get more done in their workday, so your brokerage can get all the loads covered without extra bodies or overtime. Parade’s capacity management helps customers, on average, book 30% more freight.

Another capacity management bonus during the holidays? If you do have to hire a new rep during your busiest time of year, Parade’s platform can help them be more productive faster because the learning curve isn’t as steep. All that insider knowledge like lanes and carrier information is in the system already, and Parade’s matching will help new reps make wise choices. You can check out ARL’s case study for more information on using Parade to get new reps up to speed faster.

It Helps Brokers Find More Capacity

Capacity tends to be tight around the holidays as shippers rush to get their products onto store shelves and into the hands of consumers. Brokers have to be agile and flexible to meet their shippers’ needs. That often leaves brokers struggling to find trucks to serve them.

Capacity management can help brokers tap into the extra capacity they need to cover the holiday rush in a few different ways.

Utilizing Current Capacity More Effectively

Every rep at a brokerage can’t possibly have all the information on every carrier stored in their head (or notebook, or spreadsheet) to recall at will when a specific carrier’s capacity might be a good option for a load. It leads to missed opportunities to re-use carriers.

Parade can put an end to those missed opportunities with its ranked list of potential carriers for each load. Capacity management strategically matches freight to carriers based on data collected by the system and manually inputted by reps. The algorithms that drive Parade give preference to carriers who have taken loads and therefore already been onboarded, saving reps even more time in the long run while helping them to better utilize available in-network capacity.

Pulling in New Capacity

Through Parade’s partnerships with top syndication services, load boards, and partner capacity networks, Parade customers have the option to get their loads in front of a broader, deeper capacity network without ever stepping outside of the Parade system. Loads can be posted to load boards with ease directly from the platform when the broker’s current capacity network is unable to take a load.

Parade also helps pull in new capacity because it never forgets a carrier, even a carrier that has only sent a quote but not taken a load for the brokerage yet. Without the assistance of capacity management, most brokers don’t have the time or tools to track unused quotes, meaning that potential capacity is never tapped into. Capacity management stores the carrier’s details and adds the carrier to recommended matches, when applicable, based on the information presented in the quote.

Capacity Management Helps Brokers Avoid Leaving Money on the Table

All those extra loads around the holidays are a great opportunity for brokerages to improve their cash flow. However, when capacity is thin on the ground, it can be difficult to obtain rates that translate to healthy margins. Capacity management helps brokers price freight more strategically, the extra capacity Parade offers gives them room to shop around for more favorable rates, and digital booking and quoting commonly command better margins. In all these ways, Parade helps brokers to avoid leaving money on the table.

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Are you looking to make the leap into Parade capacity management before the holidays? Reach out today to get your demo scheduled.