AI systems for carriers and brokers, where a quote answered in an hour is a quote answered too late

Where the money leaks

Rate requests go stale while you are answering them

A shipper sends a lane and a date. Answering means checking capacity, looking up what you did on that lane last, and deciding. Done in ten minutes it is a load. Done in ninety minutes the shipper already covered it.

Check calls interrupt the person who can least afford it

Where is my load, what time will it deliver, did it get there. High volume, no judgement required, and every one of them lands on a dispatcher who was in the middle of covering something.

Finding capacity is a phone job that repeats every day

Twenty calls and messages to carriers to ask the same question about equipment and availability, then the same again tomorrow for a different lane. Nothing about it improves with experience because nothing about it is retained.

The paperwork sits between the delivery and the invoice

The load delivered on Tuesday. The proof of delivery was photographed on Thursday, emailed on Friday, and matched to the right file on Monday. The work was done in a day and the money moved in a week.

Detention and accessorials go unbilled because nobody logged them

A driver waited three hours at a dock. That is a real charge with a real entitlement, and it is lost unless somebody recorded the arrival and departure at the time. Usually nobody did.

The same shipment gets typed into three systems

Into the TMS, into the customer's portal, into an email confirming what was already entered twice. It is the most common hour in a logistics office and almost nobody has measured it.

What we automate

Rate request intake and fast quoting

Lane requests captured from email, portals and phone in one place, matched against your own lane history and current capacity, and turned around while the freight is still available.

Automated check calls and status

Where-is-my-load answered from live tracking across every channel a customer uses, with proactive updates on exceptions so the customer hears about a delay from you first.

Carrier capacity sourcing

Availability and equipment requests sent across your carrier list at once, answers collected and comparable, and non-responders chased without a person doing it.

Document capture and matching

Bills of lading, proofs of delivery and receipts captured from a phone at the dock, read, matched to the shipment and filed, so billing is not waiting on paper.

Detention and accessorial capture

Arrival and departure recorded automatically, dwell time calculated against the terms, and the billable event raised while the evidence still exists.

Appointment and dock scheduling

Delivery and pickup windows booked and confirmed against real dock capacity, with rescheduling handled without a phone call.

Driver and owner-operator communication

Dispatch details, paperwork requests and changes pushed to drivers in the channel they actually read, with confirmations captured rather than assumed.

Compliance and document expiry

Insurance certificates, carrier authorities, safety ratings, licences and inspection records tracked, with renewals chased before something expires mid-load.

Freight brokerage and third party logistics

You are competing on how fast you answer. A broker's product is coverage and response. The shipper sending you a lane sent it to three others at the same time, and the quote that arrives first is disproportionately the one that wins.

Carrier sourcing is the same task forever. Every load is a fresh round of asking who has equipment where. It is the largest block of low-judgement time in the business.

The margin is decided in the details nobody logs. Detention, layover, lumper fees, a reconsignment. Each one is small, each one is real, and each one disappears if it was not captured at the moment it happened.

Lane quoting from your own history

Requests matched against what you have actually moved on that lane and what capacity looks like now, so the person quoting starts from evidence instead of memory.

Carrier outreach and capacity matching

Your carrier list contacted in parallel with the specific requirement, responses collected into one comparable view, and the follow-up handled automatically.

Customer status and exception alerts

Customers updated on their own shipments without calling in, and told about a delay before they discover it.

Can it set rates for us?
It can surface what you have done on the lane, what capacity looks like and what the constraints are, in seconds. The number stays a human decision. A system that improvises pricing on a volatile market is a system that will cost you a lane or a margin, and neither is worth the saved minute.
Our carriers will not use an app.
Then it does not use one. Carriers reply by text or email the way they already do, and the structure gets added on our side. Any workflow that depends on your carriers adopting software will not run.
Will a shipper know they are talking to a system?
For status and logistics, they generally do not care and often prefer it, because the answer is instant and correct. It is built to say plainly when it cannot help and to get a person fast, which is what people actually object to when it is missing.

Trucking fleets and carriers

Empty miles are the quiet loss. A truck heading home light is a cost you already committed to. Finding the backhaul is a time-boxed search that competes with every other job in dispatch.

Driver retention is an operations problem. Drivers leave over dispatch quality, paperwork friction and getting paid late, which are all systems, not sentiment.

Compliance is continuous, not annual. Hours of service, inspections, licences, medicals and insurance. It is a rolling set of expiry dates that nobody owns until something lapses.

Backhaul and load matching

Return capacity matched against available freight on your lanes automatically, so the empty leg gets worked while there is still time to fill it.

Driver settlement and paperwork

Trip documents collected from the road, matched, and pushed into settlement so drivers are paid on time without chasing paper.

Fleet compliance tracking

Licences, medicals, inspections and insurance tracked per driver and per unit, with renewals raised well before the date rather than at a roadside.

We already have an ELD and a TMS. What is left to automate?
Those systems record. They do not answer a customer, chase a document, or notice that a medical expires in three weeks. The gap is almost never data capture, it is everything that should happen because of the data, and that is the part still being done by people.
Can this help with driver turnover?
Indirectly and honestly: it removes the friction drivers actually complain about, which is unclear dispatch, chasing paperwork and slow settlement. It does not fix pay or home time, and any claim that software solves retention on its own is not one we would make.

Last mile and courier

The delivery window is the whole service. Customers judge a courier almost entirely on whether the thing arrived when it was supposed to and whether they knew about it.

Failed deliveries are pure cost. Nobody home, wrong address, no access code. Each one is a second trip you do not get paid for, and most are preventable with a message beforehand.

Volume is spiky and staffing is not. Seasonal peaks and campaign days arrive with the volume compressed into days, at the exact moment your dispatch desk is least able to absorb it.

Delivery notifications and windows

Recipients told when their delivery is coming, given a way to change it, and prompted for access details before the driver is at the door.

Failed delivery recovery

Missed deliveries triggering an immediate reschedule conversation with the recipient rather than a card and a second wasted trip.

Route and exception handling

Exceptions surfaced as they happen with the affected customers contacted automatically, so a dispatcher works the problem instead of discovering it.

We deliver for a larger platform. Can this still help?
Yes, and usually in the gaps the platform leaves. Their system handles the assignment. It does not handle your driver communication, your failed delivery recovery or your own customer service, and those are where the cost sits.
Does this need integration with our tracking?
It works best with it and can be built without it. Where a live feed exists we use it; where it does not, the system works from scan events, driver confirmations and scheduled windows, which is enough for most of the value.

Warehousing and distribution

The dock is the constraint. Doors, staff and hours are fixed. Everything upstream of the dock is a scheduling problem pretending to be a capacity problem.

Inventory questions arrive constantly. Customers asking what is on hand, what shipped and what is short. Answerable from the WMS, but asked to a person by email.

Exceptions are found late. Damage, shortages and mis-picks get discovered at receiving on the customer's side, which is the most expensive place to find them.

Dock appointment scheduling

Carriers booking against real door capacity, confirmations and changes handled without the desk, and no-shows surfaced immediately.

Inventory and order status answers

Stock, order and shipment questions answered directly from your warehouse system, in whatever channel the customer used to ask.

Receiving and discrepancy flows

Shortages, overages and damage captured at the point they are found, with the claim documentation assembled while the evidence is still in front of someone.

Our WMS is old and has no proper API.
That is the normal starting condition. Most of the value is reachable through scheduled exports, database reads or the reports the system already produces. It changes how it is built rather than whether.
We handle inventory for competing clients. Is that a data problem?
It is, and it is designed for explicitly. Separation of client data, who can query what, and what is retained are decided at the start rather than assumed, and written down.

Moving, specialised and oversized transport

Every job needs a survey before it needs a price. Volume, access, stairs, permits, escorts. Quoting without that is guessing, and the guess is what erodes the margin.

The booking is far from the job. Weeks between deposit and move date, in which the customer gets nervous and a competitor gets a second chance.

Permits and route approvals have their own clock. Oversized loads need approvals that take time and expire, and the schedule is built on top of them.

Survey and quote intake

Enquiries collected with the access, volume and timing details attached, including photos and video from the customer, so the estimator is not working blind.

Pre-move and pre-haul confirmation

The gap between booking and the job filled with confirmations, checklists and reminders, so the customer stays booked and nothing is discovered on the morning.

Permit and route tracking

Permit applications, expiries and route approvals tracked against the schedule so a job is not booked against an approval that will not be ready.

Can it quote a move without a survey?
It can collect enough for a range and it should not commit to a number. What it does well is make the survey happen sooner, with better information, which is where the accuracy actually comes from.
Our jobs are all different. Does automation even fit?
The jobs differ. The process around them does not: intake, survey, quote, follow-up, confirmation, paperwork, review request. That sequence is the same on every job regardless of how unusual the load is, and that is what gets built.

Cross-border and customs

The documentation is the border. A commercial invoice with the wrong detail stops a truck. The delay is not proportional to the size of the error.

Requirements change and nobody sends you a memo. Classification, valuation and program requirements move, and finding out at the crossing is the expensive way.

Status questions multiply at the border. Everyone upstream and downstream wants to know where it is, and the answer is somewhere in a broker's inbox.

Customs document preparation and checking

Commercial invoices, packing lists and certificates assembled and checked for the fields that actually stop a shipment, before the truck is at the line.

Border status and exception updates

Everyone with an interest in the shipment kept current automatically, with holds and examinations flagged the moment they happen.

Broker and partner coordination

Documents and instructions moved between you, your broker and your customer without somebody rekeying them into a third email.

Are you giving customs advice?
No, and nothing we build should be read that way. Classification and compliance decisions stay with your licensed broker and your own experts. The systems handle the document assembly, the checking against rules you supply, and the communication, which is where the time goes.
Data crossing the border is a compliance question for us.
It is, and it gets settled before anything is connected. Where data lives, what is retained and what leaves the country are design decisions, and the Québec side of that is covered in the Law 25 guide.

Which of these to fix first

Everything above is a list, and a list is not an order. If you want the order for your own week rather than for the industry in general, the automation scanner asks nine questions about how your week actually runs and returns the three jobs to automate first, with the hours each one gives back. It takes about two minutes and nothing you enter leaves your browser. If the problem is the site rather than what happens after someone gets in touch, the website test scores your page against the nine checks a first-time visitor makes.

And if you run several of these

Everything above assumes one operation. Once there is more than one, a second problem arrives on top of it, and it is not the first problem repeated. Nine locations answering the same customer question nine different ways is not a capacity failure, it is a consistency failure, and it does not show up in any individual site's numbers.

If you run more than one logistics and transport operation, or a franchise system, a regional chain, a dealer network or a practice group, the layer that goes over the top of this page is on the multi location page. Start here for the workflows, go there for what changes when you duplicate them.

What a first build usually looks like in a logistics office

Almost always quoting or check calls, because both are high volume, low judgement, and directly measurable. Rate requests captured and turned around fast, or status questions answered without touching a dispatcher.

The second piece is usually the paperwork chain: documents captured at the dock, matched, and pushed into billing, plus the detention and accessorial events that currently go unbilled. That one tends to pay for itself in found revenue rather than saved time.

Everything is built on top of the transport management system you already run. You own the result and the documentation.

The staged version of that order, with the test that says each stage is finished, is in the ninety day roadmap.

Why speed matters more here than almost anywhere

Your quote has a shelf life measured in minutes. In most industries a slow reply costs you some percentage of deals. In freight the load is simply gone, because the shipper is holding a live requirement and three other quotes.

The information exists before the question is asked. Nearly every check call is answerable from data you already have. The only reason a person answers it is that nothing connected the data to the channel the question arrived in.

Small unbilled events add up structurally. Detention, layover and accessorial charges are individually minor and collectively significant, and they are lost to record keeping rather than to negotiation.

The general argument about response speed, with the published research behind it, is in the speed to lead guide, and the calculator sizes it with your own numbers.

Why Automatik

Built for your stack

Not a generic bot, the system is wired into the tools your business already runs.

You own the system

Full access, full documentation. No platform hostage-taking.

Bilingual by default

Customer-facing pieces work in French and English from day one.

Loi 25 compliant by design

Consent, transparency and data-handling designed in, not bolted on.

FAQ

We are a small carrier with six trucks. Is this worth it?
Small carriers usually feel it most, because dispatch, quoting, paperwork and customer service are all the same one or two people. A single workflow, usually check calls or document capture, is a short project and gives that person their week back.
Do we need to change our TMS?
No. We build on top of what you run and only suggest replacing something when it is genuinely the bottleneck, which it usually is not. Most of what is missing sits around the TMS rather than inside it.
Will customers accept automated status updates?
They prefer them, as long as the update is accurate and a person is reachable. What people object to is a system that traps them or that confidently says something wrong, so these are built to hand over quickly and to say plainly when it does not know.
Our data is messy and lanes are inconsistent.
Normal, and it changes the wording rather than the plan. The system answers what it can stand behind and routes the rest to a person. Cleaning the data is often the second project, once the first has proved it is worth doing.
How long does it take to set up?
One to three weeks for the first workflow, depending on how reachable your systems are. Most of the time goes into agreeing what the system says, what it escalates and what it must never decide.
What does it cost to run?
Scoped per project, with a fixed number after a discovery call rather than hourly billing. Running costs depend on volume and which systems are involved, and both are settled before anything is built.