Parade’s new feature helps brokerages find carrier capacity in every quote, even the ones they don’t use.
For most freight brokerages, collecting quotes from carriers is simply a means to an end, with the ‘end’ in question being getting the load covered on time and on (or below) budget. The other quotes, the ones the broker representative opted not to use? They’re tossed aside and never thought about again.
How Parade is Helping Brokerages Never Waste a Quote Again
Rolled out just last week, Parade has a new feature that allows customers to capitalize on past quotes that they didn’t use for whatever reason to find new capacity and open the door to building relationships with new carriers.
The New Parade Feature in a Nutshell
The new feature focuses on showing customers not only capacity within their current network, but also other potential capacity our system has identified.
Now, in the Source search, customers will be able to see out-of-network carriers that may have capacity to cover their loads. When you search for potential capacity, you’ll find your network carriers marked with a green circle. Out-of-network carriers who have contacted you before or posted available trucks in your lane will be marked with a hollow gray circle.
We find that capacity by collecting information from all the quotes you receive for each load. Essentially, we identify carriers that were interested in working with you in the past, use information gathered by the system to determine where and when they’ll have capacity, and show them to you in Source search as a relevant option to get your load covered.
From there, it’s up to brokerages to decide how to approach potential carriers. You can reach out to the carrier directly or send them a quote request through the Parade portal. The best part about this feature is that the out-of-network carriers displayed in the Source search have already expressed interest in working with you, so at least some of the carrier vetting is out of the way already. Who knows? It could be the start of a beautiful new relationship!
Parade has always kept track of the quotes and the carriers that aren’t used, but only within the system. Now, this new feature allows the potential capacity those unused quotes and out-of-network posted trucks represent to come to the forefront.
Why Aren’t Brokerages Already Doing This?
There’s no shame in it. It’s just the nature of the freight brokerage, particularly the freight brokerage that isn’t leaning on a capacity management solution to help them build carrier relationships. They just want to get the load out the door and move on to the next one.
Most brokerages don’t have a strategy or processes and technology in place to extract, store, and use the information in those quotes to build capacity. Their representatives may not understand or see the benefit in holding on to information that’s extraneous to their day-to-day, and without tools in place to help them do it, it’s difficult to achieve, anyways.
That’s One Reason Why Parade is a Game-Changer
On top of digital freight matching, superior data reporting, and instant booking, Parade provides a handy place to keep track of carrier preferences, even going so far as to draw out carrier preferences from countless data sources, including emails, so that preferences stay updated and you’ve got the most up-to-date capacity outlook for any given lane, location, equipment type, and other specifications that are relevant to your freight and brokerage.
Would you like to see Parade’s newest feature in action for yourself and learn how your brokerage could benefit from keeping track of the quote you didn’t use? Reach out to our team to set up a demo.