How MercuryGate helps Customers Manage Trucking Capacity

Trucking capacity and carrier diversity is more accessible with digital freight tools.

Dynamics affecting volatility in trucking capacity won’t be disappearing any time soon – from congestion at the ports and tender rejections to shortages in equipment and drivers.

That’s why MercuryGate focuses on helping our customers meet these challenges and cope with disruption. We believe that better results begin with better planning. Scenario modeling, multimodal transportation optimization, and our Digital Freight Marketplace enable our customers to access all available capacity in the market, even in modes they may not typically use.

To support the execution behind the planning, the latest evolutions in our tools allow customers to:

  1. Automate their response to the most common exceptions, like a tender rejection;
  2. Deploy an arsenal of alternatives when loads need to be covered.

Let’s take a more detailed look at each of these capabilities.

Multimodal Optimization to Reduce Trucking Costs

Let’s consider a practical example where planning and optimization can reduce costs by limiting the number of carriers needed to deliver shipments.
For example, a company might traditionally ship products directly from plants and contracted production facilities to their distributors. Evaluating alternative strategies can facilitate better capacity utilization and cost reduction.

Can you consolidate parcel shipments into larger less-than-truckload and truckload moves? Do warehouses and consolidation centers align with your customer density? Could suppliers send products to an alternative location to provide a faster response?

Modeling alternatives like these allow you to optimize your freight movements in ways that often can improve service to your customers while allowing you to ship fewer loads and reduce total costs.

Balance Trucking Capacity Needs, Carrier Contracts and Brokered Freight Moves

More than ever in the past two decades, shippers face tender rejections. They are also paying more than ever for the limited number of trucks and drivers available to deliver their freight.
There are three important system capabilities MercuryGate provides to help our customers move their freight – whether they have reliable contracted carriers or not.
Waterfall Tendering to Available Carriers

MercuryGate’s waterfall tendering automates assignment of loads to carriers that may have capacity. When those transportation options reject the chance to move your freight, waterfall tendering offers that load to carriers until it is booked.

What if none of the preferred carriers have the capacity to accept the load?

Digital Freight Matching with On-Demand Capacity

MercuryGate integrates with more digital freight brokers than any other platform. Most importantly, digital freight brokers provide instant on-demand capacity, often at competitive rates.

Using digital freight brokers, you can instantly cover loads in lanes where your contractual rates are not honored, and even in lanes where you have never negotiated rates in the past.

See how you can access on-demand trucking capacity in the Digital Freight Marketplace. Download this eBook.

Brokering Loads into Hard-to-Find Trucking Capacity

Now consider a worst-case scenario. No contract carriers accepted your tender. The waterfall carriers were exhausted without success. Digital freight brokers did not have resources in the lane at an acceptable rate.

MercuryGate’s platform permits our customers to broker loads and find the trucks that others cannot find easily.

With one click, you can instantly access hundreds of carriers suitable to move your freight. Automatically access live results from carriers accessible through the largest load boards, such as DAT. You can refine the carriers based on the history of shipments and backhauls in a lane as well as trucks that the carriers have communicated availability in desired lanes.

Carriers listed are automatically notified, and they are given the opportunity to submit either quotes or bids. The Carriers have “Book It Now” options which allow them to instantly get the load based on the best rate.

Calculate your potential Saving While Using an enterprise TMS

Tap into Technology to Access Trucking Capacity

These features make MercuryGate the preferred technology for finding trucking capacity in every possible way, including contract rates, waterfall tenders, digital brokers, and automated brokering capabilities.
For every mode and every sourcing method, MercuryGate equips our customers to deliver amid the most challenging circumstances.

To learn more about securing freight capacity in the digital marketplace, download our eBook. The State of Digital Freight Networks answers important questions:

  • What does digital freight management mean?
  • What are the benefits of digital freight matching?
  • Why is integration to the TMS vital to digital freight success?

Get the eBook now for real-world use cases that highlight how digital freight networks help different companies realize new value.

Learn more about accessing trucking capacity through digital freight networks.

Karen Oxenford-Melcher
VP, Pre-Sales
MercuryGate International, Inc.
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