Logistics & Freight
Your margin doesn't leak in one big hole — it drains through a hundred emails, check calls, and rekeyed PDFs. One system stops the bleed.
In one line
A freight brokerage or 3PL runs on email and phone calls, and both are quietly expensive. A shipper's RFQ lands in an inbox, a rep reads it, checks a rate tool, digs through lane history, and answers — an hour or two later, by which point a faster broker has already covered the load. Carrier paperwork comes back as PDFs and phone photos that someone rekeys into the TMS before an invoice can go out. Dispatchers spend their day making check calls for a status the system could already know. The margin doesn't disappear in one big leak; it drains through a hundred small ones.
This matters more now than it did even a couple of years ago because the spot market is won on speed and lost on friction. The broker who quotes first and answers accurately covers the load; the one whose rep is still tabbing between an inbox and a rate board loses it. At the same time the downside has grown: the Transportation Intermediaries Association and Truckstop have repeatedly warned that double-brokering and carrier identity fraud have climbed sharply, which means the same operation that has to move faster also has to vet harder. Speed without control is exposure; control without speed is the status quo you're trying to escape.
Plenaura builds the system that sits between the inbox, the load board, and the TMS — not a chatbot bolted onto your portal, and not a slide deck of recommendations. We build the email-and-document layer that reads RFQs, BOLs, PODs, lumper receipts and rate cons and matches them to the right load; the tracking and exception layer that predicts which shipments will run late and notifies before the customer does; and the vetting and reconciliation pieces that catch fraud and missed accessorials. We connect it to the TMS you already run — McLeod, Turvo, or otherwise — so it acts on live loads rather than becoming another island of data.
The business outcome is a back office that scales with load count instead of headcount. The same team covers more freight because software handles the rekeying and the check calls, quotes go out while the load is still open, billing stops waiting on data entry, and the detention and accessorials that used to slip through actually make it onto invoices. And because you own 100% of the code, models, and pipelines — deployed on your own infrastructure — there's no per-load platform fee eroding your spread and no vendor holding your operation hostage. Work is scoped and quoted per project, and if a tool you already own solves a problem better, we'll say so instead of selling a build.
What we can build for Logistics
Quote-from-email automation
The system reads inbound RFQs and tender emails, pulls out lane, equipment, weight, and dates, and rates them against your own lane history and benchmark data — so a rep can answer in minutes while the load is still open, instead of losing it to a faster broker two hours later. Anything unusual is handed to a person to price.
Carrier paperwork without rekeying
BOLs, PODs, lumper receipts, and rate confirmations arrive as PDFs and phone photos and get read, checked, and matched to the right load automatically. Billing no longer waits on someone keying documents into the TMS, and the mismatches that cause invoice disputes get caught up front rather than in a payment fight weeks later.
Exception prediction & proactive notification
Instead of finding out a load is late when the customer calls, the system watches tracking, transit times, and appointment windows to flag the shipments likely to miss — early enough to do something about it. Your team reaches out first with a heads-up and a plan, which is what turns a service failure into a saved account.
Automated check calls & tracking updates
Status gets pulled from ELD and telematics feeds, tracking providers, and carrier check-ins, then pushed to customers as updates without a dispatcher dialing all day. Where a live call is still needed, the system handles the routine ones and escalates only the loads that actually need a human on the phone.
Detention & accessorial capture
Detention, layover, TONU, lumper, and other accessorials are notorious for slipping through and never reaching an invoice. The system watches arrival and departure times, dwell, and the supporting paperwork to surface the billable extras as they happen — so the revenue you actually earned doesn't quietly leak out of every load.
Invoice & settlement reconciliation
Carrier invoices get matched against rate confirmations and shipper billing against the agreed rate, with discrepancies flagged instead of paid or missed. It turns a slow, error-prone manual match into a fast, auditable step, so settlement moves quicker and the margin on each load is what you intended, not what a keying error left behind.
Carrier vetting & fraud screening
Before a load is tendered, the system checks authority, insurance, and history and screens for the double-brokering and identity-fraud patterns the industry has seen rise sharply. Risky carriers get flagged with the evidence attached, so your team makes the call with the facts in front of them rather than after the freight is gone.
How we deliver it
Start in the inbox and on the load board
We map how your operation actually runs — how RFQs come in, how loads get built and covered, where paperwork and billing stall — so we automate the steps that bleed time and money, not the ones that demo well. The first build targets the clearest payback, usually quoting or paperwork.
Prove it on your lanes
We validate against your own emails, documents, and load history before committing to a full build, so you see it working on your freight and your carriers rather than a clean demo set. If a piece isn't worth automating, we say so up front instead of padding the scope.
Connect, don't fragment
We wire the system into the TMS you already run so it reads and writes live loads, rather than adding another disconnected tool your team has to reconcile. Quoting, tracking, billing, and vetting share the same data, so each one makes the others sharper.
Keep a human on the exceptions
The system handles the routine, high-confidence bulk — routine rates, clean paperwork, standard check calls — and routes anything uncertain to a person with the context already gathered. Brokers and dispatchers spend their time negotiating and covering hard freight, not rekeying.
Hand over everything
You receive the full code, models, pipelines, and documentation, deployed on your own infrastructure under your brand, with a real handoff so your team can run and extend it. No per-load platform fee, no lock-in. Work is scoped and quoted per project, on a clear timeline agreed up front.
What these systems are built to do
The kind of capability these systems give you — not client metrics.
AI for Logistics — answered
Yes — connecting to your TMS is part of the build, not a separate project. Whether you run McLeod, Turvo, or another platform, the system reads inbound emails and documents and then writes loads, statuses, and billing data back where your brokers and dispatchers already work. The goal is a system embedded in your real flow, acting on live loads, not another dashboard sitting beside the TMS that someone has to remember to check.
No — the messy mix is exactly the reality we build for. Structured EDI tenders are the easy case; the harder, higher-value work is the email RFQs, the phone-photo PODs, and the free-text updates that don't fit a clean format, and that's where the system earns its keep. We handle EDI where you have it and read the unstructured email-and-document flow around it, so you're not stuck automating only the small slice that was already tidy.
Accurate enough to handle the bulk of routine RFQs and paperwork straight through, with confidence scoring that flags anything uncertain for a person instead of guessing. We measure performance on your real document and email mix during the build, not on a clean sample, and where a scan or photo is too poor to read reliably the system routes it to a human rather than fabricating a value. The point isn't zero people — it's letting your team spend its time only where judgment is genuinely needed.
No — it takes the repetitive keyboard and phone work off them so they can do the parts that actually need a person. Rating routine lanes, reading paperwork, and making standard check calls are handled by the system; negotiating rates, covering difficult freight, and managing exceptions stay with your team, now with more time and better information. Brokerages that adopt this tend to cover more loads with the team they already have, not fewer people.
You do — completely. You own 100% of the code, the models, and the data pipelines, deployed on your own infrastructure under your brand, with no per-load platform fee and no vendor lock-in. Your lane history, rates, and carrier data are a proprietary asset that makes your quoting sharper over time — it stays yours, not something rented back to you through a tool you can never leave.
We start by mapping where your operation bleeds the most time — usually emailed quoting or carrier paperwork — and ship that first so you see real impact before expanding to tracking, reconciliation, or vetting. Each engagement is scoped and quoted per project on a clear timeline agreed up front, and we validate on your own emails and documents before a full build. If an off-the-shelf tool genuinely solves a piece of it, we'll point you there rather than build something you don't need.
Related use cases
Other industries we build for
Let's build it for Logistics.
Tell us the operation you want to transform. We'll map the system and scope it with you — or give you an honest no.