Customers Managed transportation
Your tracking platform is part of the contract. Choose it like it is.
Managed transportation isn't brokerage with a different name. You run a program on someone else's behalf, customization requests are commitments, and the renewal is a formal evaluation with procurement attached. This page is for the person who owns that decision.
What forces the evaluation
Three things, usually in this order.
Consolidation
Your TMS vendor joins a company that also sells tracking, and someone senior asks why you're not using it.
Price
Legacy tracking vendors know your renewal number. Expect a bid under whatever you pay now.
A requirement you can't meet
A shipper asks for something specific about how their freight is tracked, escalated or documented, and the answer is a roadmap.
The first two make the evaluation happen. The third one decides it.
The criteria that separate products
Ask every vendor these. Here are our answers.
| Criterion | The question | What Chain does |
|---|---|---|
| Channel | What share of carriers answer the first outreach, by channel? | Text the driver, email the dispatcher, both in one thread. Voice is a fallback, with the transcript in the same thread. |
| Per-account rules | Can you change checkpoint timing for one shipper without a release? | Checkpoints scoped to a shipper, lane, load type, carrier or workspace, changed when the account changes. |
| Escalation | Where does an exception go, and does the agent stop talking? | Email to the reps on the load; the agent stands down until a person replies; logged in the thread. |
| Program splitting | Can one platform separate divisions and accounts cleanly? | Workspaces by revenue code, terminal, office or branch, with enterprise settings inherited and reporting rolled up. |
| Write-back | Do times and call-ins land in our TMS in our format? | Yes, including call-ins in the customer's own codes, plus documents filed to the right slot. |
| Coverage | What happens when a carrier won't install anything? | ELD, EDI, carrier API, a pasted tracking link, TMS location, or plain text. |
| Fraud | Can you see the device, or only the ping? | Device-level signals with carrier-wide warnings, when the Chain app is the tracking source. |
| Measurement | What's the definition and denominator of your automation rate? | Published at three levels of strictness. |
Deployment
Value before go-live.
30 to 45 days for most programs. No implementation fee, no integration fee, and no engineers living in your office.
Integration
Days 3–14Your TMS connected and fields mapped by Chain, not by you.
Tuning
Days 10–30Data flowing and checkpoints configured against your written SOP, account by account. Then exclusions, escalation routing and geofences, refined with your champion.
Go-live sign-off
Go-liveA subset first, then the program in waves.
Questions
What program owners ask
Can we keep our current vendor during the evaluation?
Yes. Running in parallel on a defined subset of loads is the most common way to evaluate Chain. It compares on your freight, lanes and carriers, not on a demo.
How much can we configure ourselves?
Checkpoint timing, message content, escalation routing, quiet hours, geofences, exclusions and per-load instructions are all configuration. TMS field mapping is done by Chain, so changes cost a conversation, not a project.
Does it pretend to be a person?
It sends under your configured identity, like your team's messages do. If a carrier asks directly whether they're talking to AI, it says yes.
Will it discuss money with our carriers?
No. Rates, detention, lumpers and any dollar figure go to a rep. On a lumper it can tell the driver to keep the receipt if your SOP says so, then flag the rep.
What doesn't Chain do?
It doesn't build loads, run collections or audit invoices, though it collects and validates the documents. It doesn't surface hours of service or reroute drivers, on purpose, to avoid creating liability for you.