FreightForward
Turning an email-and-spreadsheet brokerage into a two-sided freight marketplace
2023
Logistics
Booking time down from 3.5 hours to 18 minutes; 2,200 active carriers onboarded in 14 months
The problem
FreightForward had been operating as a traditional freight broker — shippers sent load requirements by email, operations staff called carriers, deals were confirmed on the phone and logged into a spreadsheet. It worked until it didn't: the business had hit a ceiling at around 420 loads per week because adding volume meant adding headcount linearly. More critically, their largest shipper client had issued an ultimatum: integrate with their SAP TMS or lose the contract within 12 months. The deeper problem we uncovered during discovery was trust. Small carriers — owner-operators and fleets under 20 trucks — were deeply suspicious of marketplace platforms after being undercut on price by aggregators. FreightForward's reputation was built on fair dealing with carriers, and they were unwilling to build something that would erode that.
Our approach
We built a two-sided platform with distinct experiences for shippers and carriers. The matching algorithm weights carrier relationship history and previous performance alongside price — meaning a carrier who has reliably delivered for a shipper gets priority in matching for that shipper's future loads, not just whoever quotes lowest. Spot pricing uses a transparent model: carriers see median market rates before quoting, not a blind auction. The SAP integration for the anchor client took 11 weeks longer than planned due to their IT change-freeze period; we used that time to build out the carrier mobile app, which hadn't been in the original scope but emerged clearly as a need during pilot onboarding. We onboarded the first 200 carriers through assisted sessions rather than self-serve, which was expensive but gave us enough qualitative data to fix three friction points before opening the platform broadly.
The results
Average booking time dropped from 3.5 hours to 18 minutes. 2,200 carriers are active on the platform 14 months after launch. The SAP contract was retained and expanded. Carrier churn in the first year was 9% — lower than FreightForward expected and substantially lower than industry benchmarks for new platforms. One candid note: the automated matching rate is 61%, not the 85% we targeted. The remaining 39% still require manual intervention for oversized loads and hazmat — a problem we're working on in the current phase.
Tech Stack
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