Guides

One question per guide, answered first.

Written for the people who actually move freight: dispatchers, ops, AP, and the reps on the phones. Each guide opens with the answer, then shows the work. Terms link to the glossary.

Documents

Freight audit and payment: what it is, what it checks, in-house or outsourced

Freight audit and payment is the process of checking every carrier or broker invoice against what was agreed before paying it, then paying it and recording where the cost belongs. The audit checks the rate and fuel against the contract or rate confirmation, each accessorial against its authorization and support, the class and weight on LTL bills, duplicates, and the proof of delivery. Shippers with heavy volume outsource it to freight audit and payment companies that charge per invoice or a percentage of spend; smaller shippers and most brokerages do it in-house, where the work is gathering documents rather than checking them.

4 min read

How to audit a carrier invoice against the rate confirmation

Audit every carrier invoice against two documents, the rate confirmation and the proof of delivery, with five checks: it is not a duplicate; linehaul and fuel equal the rate confirmation; every accessorial was authorized and has its support (times for detention, a receipt for a lumper, a dispatch record for a TONU); the POD is present, signed and either clean or already handled; and the remit-to matches the carrier's file or a factor's notice of assignment. Most invoices pass in a minute; the ones that fail are the same few cases every week.

3 min read

What counts as a proof of delivery, and why invoices stall without one

A valid proof of delivery is the receiver's signature or stamp on a document that identifies the shipment, with the delivery date and ideally the time, plus any exceptions noted at that moment. A photo of the signed delivery copy of the bill of lading is the standard and is accepted by nearly every shipper. Without it the carrier cannot be paid, the broker cannot bill, and any shortage or damage claim has no starting point, which is why the fastest brokerages get the photo from the driver before the truck leaves the dock.

3 min read

Rate confirmation vs. bill of lading: what each one does

A rate confirmation is the contract between a freight broker and a carrier for one load: stops, dates, rate, terms. A bill of lading is the document between the shipper and the carrier for the freight itself: what was loaded, for whom, in what condition. The rate confirmation settles money; the bill of lading settles the freight. When they disagree about the freight, the bill of lading is what the carrier signed for.

3 min read

Every field on a rate confirmation, and the ones that start disputes

A rate confirmation has seven parts: parties and references, stops with appointment windows, the freight, the rate and whether it includes fuel, accessorial terms, instructions for the driver, and the legal terms incorporated from the carrier agreement. Disputes come from four fields most often: whether fuel is in the rate, detention free time and rate, the pallet count and weight, and appointment windows written loosely enough to argue about.

3 min read

Load tracking

How to automate driver check calls without a driver app

Replace the check call with a ladder. First a text with a link the driver taps once to share location; most drivers do. If there is no tap within about thirty minutes, an automated call asks four questions and records the answers. If nobody answers and nobody answers the retry, the load goes on an exception list and a person makes one call with everything already known. The requirements are the carrier's written consent to automated texts and calls, a registered business texting number, and a schedule that respects quiet hours and daily caps.

3 min read

Load tracking options for small brokers: ELD feeds, driver apps, tracking links and calls

There are four ways to know where a truck is: an ELD or telematics feed through a visibility platform (automatic, precise, only for carriers who connect), a driver app (continuous, if the driver installs and keeps it running), a text-message tracking link (one tap, any phone, no install, needs consent and a registered number), and a check call (works with everyone, costs a person's time). Small brokerages on the spot market end up using all four, in that order of preference, and the design that matters is how they escalate from one to the next.

3 min read

Sales calls

The freight broker cold call opener that gets past "we have a broker"

Open with your name, one line of relevance to the shipper's freight, and a specific question about their lanes instead of a description of your service: 'Jack with Marrowdale Logistics. We cover Chicago-to-Texas for two food shippers near you. Who covers your lanes when your regular carrier falls off?' The question does the work. A shipper who has a broker will still answer it, because it is about their problem, and the answer tells you whether there is business here.

3 min read

Load boards for freight brokers: posting, covering, and not getting burned

A load board is a marketplace where brokers post loads and carriers post trucks; it is where most spot-market truckload freight gets covered and where most freight fraud starts. Brokers use it well by posting enough detail to get the right calls and not enough to let a stranger re-post the load, by reading the board's rate data as a range rather than a price, by verifying every caller against FMCSA records before a rate confirmation goes out, and by watching the board for their own load reappearing at a lower rate. The paid boards are where the capacity is; free boards are worth a posting but rarely cover a load alone.

4 min read

Seven shipper objections every freight broker hears, and what to say

Shipper objections are rarely refusals; they are the default way a busy traffic manager ends a call that has not yet given them a reason to continue. The response to each is the same shape: agree with it, ask one specific question about the shipper's freight, and let the answer decide whether there is a next step. Arguing with an objection loses the call; asking past it sometimes wins one.

3 min read

Claims and accessorials

Detention claims that get paid: the packet, the timing, the arithmetic

A detention claim gets paid when it is documented and fast: the rate confirmation showing the appointment and the detention terms, the BOL or POD with the facility's in and out times, tracking data that agrees with them, a one-line calculation (hours on site minus free time, times the rate), and a notice to the shipper while the truck was still waiting. Most detention goes unbilled not because it did not happen but because one of those pieces was missing when the claim was due.

3 min read

Compliance

Carrier identity theft: when the MC is clean and the truck is not theirs

In carrier identity theft the MC number is real and the record behind it is clean, because it belongs to a carrier that has nothing to do with the load. A lookup describes the company, not the person on the phone or the truck at the dock. Brokers catch it where the impostor has to supply something of their own: a phone number or email that is not on the FMCSA record, a certificate of insurance whose policy number FMCSA has never seen, a lease the real carrier never signed, a truck the real carrier does not own. A call to the number on the FMCSA record before the rate confirmation goes out stops most of it. A carrier whose number is being used should challenge each inspection in DataQs, report to the FMCSA and the police, and warn its insurer, load boards and factoring company.

7 min read

10DLC for freight brokers: registering to text drivers, step by step

10DLC is the US carriers' registration scheme for businesses that text from ordinary ten-digit numbers. A brokerage registers its legal entity as a brand, describes its messages and how recipients consent as a campaign, and puts its number into a messaging service tied to that campaign; until the campaign is approved, carriers block the traffic. Registration takes a few days to a few weeks, costs a few dollars a month, and fails for two predictable reasons: the campaign description names a brand that is not the registered legal entity, and the consent description mentions a signed form the reviewer cannot see.

5 min read

Double brokering: how to spot it, prevent it, and report it

Double brokering is a carrier handing your load to another carrier, or a fraudster posing as a carrier to collect your payment and never pay the truck that hauled it. You stop most of it before dispatch by matching the caller to FMCSA records, calling back on the number FMCSA lists, refusing brand-new authorities and unverifiable insurance, and never sending a rate confirmation to an email that does not match the carrier's domain. You catch the rest at the dock: the name on the truck and the driver's paperwork must match the rate confirmation. When you find it, stop payment, get the freight's real location from the driver, and report it to the FMCSA's complaint database and the load board it came through.

4 min read

Texting truck drivers legally: consent, TCPA, 10DLC, STOP and quiet hours

Automated texts and artificial-voice calls to a mobile phone in the US require the recipient's prior express consent under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and since 2024 the FCC treats AI-generated voices as artificial. A brokerage gets that consent in writing through a clause in the carrier agreement and rate confirmation, records who confirmed it and when, sends from a number registered under 10DLC, identifies itself and offers STOP in every message, honors STOP and HELP immediately, and stays inside quiet hours and sensible daily caps. This is an operator's summary, not legal advice.

4 min read

Reporting and finance

AscendTMS to LogiPilot Analyst: the export, the upload, the question, the Monday email

Take one export from Reporting › Load Reports with the Column Layout set to Extended - Charge Types in Columns, Live, Archived and Cancelled loads included and Display All Roles ticked; a second, smaller export with the Customized Column Layout adds the actual arrival times. Upload it at Data › Upload an export; Analyst recognises the AscendTMS layout, shows what the file yields, and imports it. Ask questions in English on the Ask page, then schedule the Weekly Ops Review for Monday morning. Each week, export again with the same settings and upload; the schedule sends when the new export is in, and tells someone when it is not.

11 min read