Digital freight-matching company Convoy said it’s achieved a trucking-industry first: 100% automated brokering of loads to carriers, including matching and pricing, on lanes in top freight markets.

In February, Convoy announced 100% automated load matching. With this milestone milestone, Convoy said, it has achieved 100% automated load pricing in markets such as Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Los Angeles, completing full automation of the brokering process.

In the traditional process for matching a load to a truck, brokers and asset-based carriers manually negotiate the pricing for each load, typically via phone or email. Convoy contends that this process takes hours to complete, with an average of 10 back-and-forth emails and phone calls, and contributes to higher prices for shippers as well as more hassle for drivers and carriers. 

Automated brokering addresses thousands of loads at a time, involves zero emails/calls, and takes minutes, according to the company. Convoy’s digital freight network combines its dense network of carriers with the use of machine learning models to fully automate the process of matching and pricing a truck to a load. 

As freight volume increases across Convoy’s digital freight network, carriers get more load options, better routes, and fewer empty miles, allowing them to earn more. At the same time, as more carriers work with Convoy, capacity increases and costs decrease for shippers. Now, automated brokering accelerates this “flywheel effect,” Convoy said.

“This breakthrough on automated platform pricing by Convoy on high-density cargo lanes is significant and definitive towards achieving a future of truly automated touch-of-a-single-button-type brokering.” said Silpa Paul, team lead of commercial vehicle research and consulting at Frost and Sullivan. “Digital freight providers have been around for years, but where they have struggled is precisely in automating pricing. Most have had to create a system of customer account executives with call support to actually complete the brokerage process. Thus they have been operating more or less like traditional brokers.”

Since its founding in 2015, Convoy has developed and refined machine learning models to automate otherwise manual processes. In November, Convoy announced it has raised $400 million.

“With automation reducing manual work, Convoy’s operations team can focus on establishing new markets and expanding our carrier base to meet our growing demand,” said Ziad Ismail, Convoy’s chief product officer.

Convoy claims shippers such Anheuser-Busch, CHEP, and Waiākea among the companies using its technology.