Logistics Technology News

Acquisitions, new product releases and fresh investment among companies catering to truckload brokers speak to an industry wrestling with the need to make things easier for customers.

The acquisition of Trucker Tools will give DAT access to carrier positioning data to arm its truckload broker customers.

Advent eModal, a three-decade landmark provider of fee collection and appointment scheduling at container terminals, has been sold by private equity group Blackstone to air cargo software specialist CargoSprint.

Generative AI is changing the nature of core freight brokerage processes, potentially impacting the amount brokers earn and how employees get paid.

Freight brokers large and small are testing software, including the tools developed by Vooma, that automate core functions such as quoting, load building and tracking.

The two biggest transportation visibility vendors in the market have been battling each other in court since 2019 but can now refocus on winning market share.

NYSHEX is making a renewed effort to solve the fundamental problem of ocean container supply chains, promoting the use of index-linked contracts to build contract integrity and certainty.

The use cases for sensor-enabled container fleets could expand if shipping lines see such hardware as a legitimate tool to combat the threat of illicit goods movement.

By connecting to forwarder-customers of software vendor e2open, Freightos is continuing its push to develop electronic booking capability in the air freight industry.

A dearth of consolidation means there are still plenty of visibility vendors for shippers to choose from, but it also means the market as a whole is on somewhat unsteady ground.

GenLogs, founded by an ex-counterterrorism expert, is offering shippers and brokers a way to track lost trailers and trucks as cargo theft booms in the US.

The New York Shipping Exchange’s plan to introduce indexes to support long-term contracts adds to an already crowded field of providers.

The company sees its new Broker Access product as another channel for brokers to find capacity outside of contracts with truckload carriers and posting spot freight on a load board.

Customers of automated freight procurement tool Keelvar will get access to more than $1 trillion in truckload pricing data as part of a new arrangement with DAT Freight & Analytics.

Shippers once saw small variances on freight bills as a nuisance too insignificant to dispute, but technology is enabling more efficient scrutiny across transportation modes.

Some freight brokers are increasing the number of loads they can book per day with software that automates repetitive components of the booking process.

The test showed that eBLs sped the transfer of documents from the exporter to the importer using the WaveBL platform as a shared ledger.

GenLogs, a technology provider aiming to help US brokers track trucks, uses a network of roadside sensors to passively collect truckload carrier locations.

The software provider has steered clear of outside investment as it sought to patiently build import management tools for shippers.

Investors have put $6.3 million into a startup aiming to provide a procurement and transportation management software alternative to enterprise-focused solutions.

Forwarders booking less-than-containerload business from shippers face documentation and pricing challenges that cut into their ability to carve out margin.

A range of supply chain mapping and risk management tools have emerged in the past decade, many aimed at customs brokers and third-party logistics providers.

A flood of duty-free shipments from Asia has upped the ante on brokers having broad knowledge of the upstream supply chains used by their importer clients.

Most of Freightos’ traction in air and ocean freight procurement has centered around spot pricing, but the purchase of Shipsta will give it access to contract data from enterprise shippers.

A new $54.9 million fund has launched to support climate-focused logistics startups, a rare bright spot amid a larger pull-back in venture capital investment in the wider shipping industry.

Despite the nearly $140 billion invested in logistics startups globally from 2012 through 2023, most of the industry’s major inefficiencies remain and the underlying structure of the industry has hardly changed.

The retail giant will enable sellers using its US fulfillment services to access its negotiated ocean rates for full containers from Yantian, Shanghai and Ningbo.

Many tools tend to focus on providing visibility centered around the “planned” supply chain, but perhaps what the industry needs is a shift in mindset that puts greater attention on exceptions, writes analyst Lars Jensen.

The $200 million funding round cuts against the broader trend of venture capital investors pulling back from early- and growth-stage supply chain and logistics startups.

A report from the consultancy pins lackluster funding into logistics startups on static freight demand and a steep decline in freight rates in 2023.

The Singapore-based ocean carrier is the fifth shipping line to use WaveBL’s electronic bill of lading product.

The collaboration comes barely a month after Google researchers said they could help shipping lines improve their network designs and profitability.

The former CEO of the now bankrupt logistics software vendor has landed in federal prison after a high-profile saga that began with Slync employees not getting paid for weeks in 2022.

While the industry has focused on areas such as tracking and quoting, advancements in booking technology portend new potential for digitizing containerized supply chains.

Electronic booking standards across ocean carriers would make it easier for shippers and forwarders to do business with a range of capacity providers, says the Digital Container Shipping Association.

Shippers and forwarders now have a range of options to book with ocean carriers, who themselves have developed direct online portals to lure smaller ocean freight buyers.

The company believes shippers will benefit from a payments network it has created to help brokers and carriers bill shippers accurately before an invoice is sent out.

Progress on the industry’s goal of fully moving to electronic bills of lading by 2030 has been slow, but more carriers are signing with vendors to enable the migration.

The uneven success of the digital brokerage model suggests that the foundations of the market were harder to disrupt than venture investors first envisioned a decade ago, and maybe even harder than some of the founders of digital brokerages had foreseen.

The ocean carrier joins rivals Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd — all investors in NYSHEX — in using the contract management platform.