Logistics Technology News

Instant freight quoting is becoming a divided market, with one end focused on large shippers and the other on small and medium-sized businesses, according to Freightos’ annual State of Online Freight Sales survey.

Investment continues to surge into technologies that enable small truckload carriers to improve administrative and operational aspects of their businesses, with SmartHop’s $12 million funding round the latest example.

E2open returned to the public markets Friday after a six-year absence, a move that will allow the supply chain software provider to continue to grow organically and through acquisitions.

Momentum toward digital quoting and booking in ocean shipping is undeniable, but it remains to be seen whether shippers and forwarders will demand — and container lines are actually capable of delivering — truly dynamic pricing.

Container visibility provider ClearMetal said demand for its product aimed at helping shippers improve shipment delivery date accuracy ballooned in 2020 as “customer promise date” becomes a more important logistics metric.

Given the challenges around container tracking data collection and quality, forwarders could one day become the clearinghouse for all the various components of an end-to-end visibility picture, as well as the provider of quality control for that data.

A new funding round for logistics automation software provider Slync.io is meant to enable the company to expand in Europe and Asia as it seeks to solve long-running manual process issues for forwarders and shippers.

A new technology-based parcel company, founded by an ex-Amazon and Walmart executive, emerged from stealth development Tuesday with aims on serving retailers spurned or inadequately served by UPS and FedEx.

Software providers say the proliferation of integrations between transportation management systems and domestic freight brokers in 2020 hints at a future in which a TMS will no longer be merely a static system, but a living platform.

London- and Vilnius, Lithuania-based Cargo Stream is launching a container booking application that looks to address systemic issues around equipment availability and exchange.

Another new entrant in the small carrier TMS space, Dallas-based Axele, portends more market structure and available capacity for shippers to tap into.

A surge in demand for Shipwell’s technology-focused managed transportation approach, with freight under management tripling in 2020, is a sign of shippers’ increased reliance on an outsourced approach to logistics.

Companies such as Werner Enterprises, Schneider National, and U.S. Xpress are taking an active role in the development of autonomous trucks, but not, they say, to replace drivers.

The World Bank and International Association of Ports and Harbors are urging ports and maritime ecosystems to quickly find public and private solutions to digitize operations and build data-sharing initiatives to bolster trade growth.

Shippers facing a challenging ocean freight environment in 2021 are being urged to develop a plan to tackle a particularly thorny operational aspect in the industry: container allocations.

Startup SILQ is aiming to provide apparel retailers with an alternative to buying houses, which act as agents that find suitable suppliers in overseas locations.

European truckload broker sennder has vaulted into the upper reaches of venture capital-based logistics startups with a $160 million funding round and a $1 billion valuation.

A partnership between widely used rate management software provider Portrix and container line digital quoting platform BlueX Trade is yet another sign of the need for forwarders to get direct access to digital quotes offered by carriers.

Shippers have used the spot trucking market to account for volume surges in 2020, but they can use data to better calibrate their contracts, including short-term deals, freight procurement expert Heather Mueller tells JOC Uncharted.

Budget limitations are forcing forwarders to choose between investing in customer-facing tools that could help grow their market share or back-end automation that could help them extract more profit from existing business.

Post-Brexit trade changes will add an extra layer of complexity to the UK’s cross-border e-commerce market.

The third party logistics provider SEKO Logistics has its eyes on tripling revenue over the next five years, leading it to turn to the private equity market for investment for the second time in five years.

Migrating away from traditional spreadsheet-based freight procurement is becoming a priority for shippers as they move toward more frequent bids and seek to avoid data silos.

Third-party logistics provider GlobalTranz saw a strong increase in demand for managed transportation service in 2020 and expects the outsourcing trend to continue as supply chain disruption spills into 2021.

Technology provider Turvo has attempted to redefine what a transportation management system is since it emerged in 2017, and now it’s targeting big shippers and logistics providers dealing with multiple systems.

A logistics technology provider for US importers is taking a counterintuitive approach to driving adoption of software by making its system function similarly to Microsoft Excel while gradually driving customized modernization in the background.

The integration between AscendTMS’s widely-used transportation management software with predictive pricing and historical benchmark trucking data from DAT Solutions is a signal that users of such systems want more value piped directly into the platforms on which they rely.

Visibility provider project44 has raised $100 million in its latest funding round to build out its multimodal platform while hinting it may seek to go public in the next two years.

Freightos has developed an application programming interface (API) to allow e-commerce marketplaces to plug international freight services directly into their broader offerings to business-to-business sellers.

Less-than-containerload (LCL) operators are driving the bulk of technology development in their market owing to its niche nature and inherent complexity, but that may change as more volume gravitates to LCL.

Convoy is integrating with AscendTMS, another sign of the importance of enabling small truckload carriers with software to manage driver dispatch and scheduling, which helps give shippers electronic access to more capacity.

Momentum for software that helps small carriers manage their businesses keeps growing, with CloudTrucks getting $20.5 million in venture capital to build its “virtual carrier” model and an instant pay product for drivers.

Supply chain management software provider Blue Yonder is suing its competitor Kinaxis over alleged patent infringements that Blue Yonder says have cost it $20 million in customer deals.

BlueX Trade and Catapult are partnering to pipe instant rates from BlueX’s container line customers to Catapult’s forwarder customers, a further sign that instant quoting is gaining traction as an alternative to traditional spot quoting.

A technology-based freight broker has spun out its technology as a standalone transportation management system (TMS), signaling the need to better connect small carriers to surface capacity for shippers.

Interest in drop-and-hook programs continues to grow, with the broker Transfix now offering an “asset-like” service that it says it uses technology to find the right capacity for its shipper customers.

The extraction of data from commercial invoices is a sort of holy grail in the world of logistics automation software, and solutions providers are seeing demand from logistics providers as they hone in on this area.

3Gtms caters primarily to large enterprise US domestic shippers that have complex freight transportation networks.

The Digital Container Shipping Association’s latest effort is targeting a long sought-after goal in maritime and logistics — a paperless bill of lading — by making it standardized and interoperable.

A startup enterprise communication software provider, with roots in the maritime industry and with traction among global traders, announced a $10 million funding round.