Booking New
Get more loads covered without adding more work.
Chain handles carrier outreach, qualification, negotiation and booking within your rules, helping your team cover more freight with less manual effort.
Inbound
Your reps should only read the offers worth reading.
Carriers answer your posted loads. Plenty of those offers are far off your rate or come from carriers you'd never use. The time saved is all the noise your reps never have to read.
Filters
Every offer is checked against your exclusions, your incumbent list and your vetting platform (Highway, MyCarrierPortal and others), before anyone talks rates.
Negotiates
Inside the start, target and max on the post. It asks for the carrier's number first and never negotiates backward.
Hands over
Only the offers worth a decision reach your team, with the full thread and a one-click path to award.
Outbound
Your carriers first. In your order.
Instead of waiting for carriers to find the load, Autopilot goes to them, in your order. Each tier gets its window before the next one opens.
Outreach goes by email and text. Tiers, timing and exclusions are yours to set.
Contract carriers
Stays in your TMSYour awarded carrier for the lane, tendered in your TMS the way it is today.
Core carriers
e.g. 4 days before pickupCarriers who've moved the lane for you in the last year, contacted automatically. Incumbents and contract carriers are excluded.
Negotiation
Negotiates inside your rate authority.
Start, target and max come from the post, your TMS or your pricing tool. Autopilot gets the carrier's number first, opens its authority over rounds rather than on the first counter, and never negotiates backward.
| The carrier's ask | What Autopilot does |
|---|---|
| At or below your target | Sends it to your team to award, or awards it automatically if you've switched that on |
| Between target and max | Counters inside the range, never above the carrier's own ask |
| Just over max | Escalates to your rep with a briefing on the load, lane and rounds so far |
| Far over max | Filters it out and keeps working toward your rate |
| No number given | Asks for one. It won't invent a counter |
| No rates on the post | Works from SONAR market rates loaded onto the post, or escalates |
| Under max, but underwater | Escalates. Under max isn't the same as profitable against your customer rate |
Carrier memory
It remembers your carriers.
A booking-only tool starts every load from zero. Because your carriers already track on Chain, the agent that books your next load knows who they are, where they run, and how they performed.
- Identity, once. It never re-asks for a DOT or MC it already resolved.
- History that carries over. Past negotiations, notes, lanes and rates follow the carrier into the next conversation.
- The right contact. Dispatchers, drivers, and the channel each one actually answers.
- The next load. When a load covers, it looks for the reload or backhaul that fits the carrier.
Your data, your memory: learned from your loads, used on your loads, and never shared with another customer.
Control
Runs your rules, not generic ones.
Prioritized load rules decide which freight Autopilot handles, what it discloses, and how far it negotiates. Enterprise settings flow down to every workspace; a workspace can narrow them, never widen them. Test any change in dry-run before it touches a carrier.
Brings your rep in at the right moment
A workable ask, an over-max meet point, or a question it can't answer. The rep gets the load, lane, summary and why now, with one click into the thread. A rep reply pauses the agent.
Every offer on the record
Carrier quotes are logged with their source, whether email or Highway. Repeats collapse, and a changed price is a new offer. The activity feed shows what Autopilot did and why.
A board for every post
Post status, rates and every carrier conversation in one view, with takeover in chat at any moment.
A private portal for your carriers
A shared link your carriers can browse, with carrier-level filtering and blocking.
One platform
A booking-only tool starts every load from zero.
No tracking signal, no paperwork loop, and no history with the carrier it's negotiating with. Your Autopilot agent books the load and then keeps working it, so the next negotiation starts with everything the last load taught it.
- Book
Negotiates inside your rates
Your carriers first, then the board. Award and rate written to your TMS.
- Cover
Confirms the truck
Driver and dispatcher identified, pickup confirmed, references sent.
- Track
Checks in, writes back
Text, email and app check-ins. Arrivals and departures into the TMS.
- Remember
Learns the carrier
Response time, on-time record, paperwork, rates taken. Ready for the next load.
Questions
What carrier sales teams ask about Booking
Will it quote our rate to a carrier?
No. It asks for the carrier's number first, every time. Your start, target and max are never disclosed.
Who awards the load?
Your team, by default. Autopilot negotiates and your rep clicks award. Automatic award for offers at or below target is a switch you can turn on when you're ready.
How does outreach reach carriers?
By email and text, to your core carriers first in the order you set.
What about our contract carriers?
Contract tendering can stay in your TMS, and contract carriers are excluded from automated outreach. Where your TMS syncs lane contracts, you can turn Chain's workflows on or off per contract carrier.
What happens when a rep jumps in?
A rep reply pauses or stands the agent down on that conversation. Any thread can be taken over in chat at any time.
What happens after the award?
The carrier and rate are written to your TMS, which issues the rate con. Then the same Autopilot starts tracking the load: driver contacted, pickup number held until the truck is close, POD collected at the dock.