Freight matching marketplace truckstop.com today said it is offering free and premium services to trucking companies and freight brokerages throughout the month of April, in a move to help carriers find freight, get home, connect with the brokerage community, and increase awareness of the work they are performing during coronavirus travel bans and work closures.
“The trucking industry needs our support now more than ever,” truckstop.com CEO Paris Cole said in a release. “Truckers are spending long hours away from their families and putting themselves at risk to keep our shelves stocked. We hope this show of support will ease the burden on logistics providers, trucking companies, and drivers, making it easier for them to find loads while they are on the road.”
The announcement is the latest example of logistics technology vendors opening their platforms during the Covid-19 crisis to share free and flexible versions of their products with logistics organizations that are working long hours to meet spikes in consumer demand. Qualified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of the nation’s “essential” workforce, supply chain professionals across warehouses, trucks, trains, and ports are exempt from states’ stay-at-home policies, so they are hustling to reassign logistics assets from idled sectors of the economy to critical goods like groceries and cleaning supplies. Those forces have led to a jump in the use of online learning platforms, rising popularity for cloud-based software products that can be accessed from any location, and hot demand for last-mile delivery scheduling tools that can quickly provide extra capacity.
Also today, The Freightos Group unlocked access to its Freightos Baltic Index (FBX) Daily, a containerized freight rate index, for the remainder of 2020. Originally launched in February as a paid service, the FBX gives visibility not only to daily ocean freight rates, but also to the larger patterns of global supply and demand freight trends, Freightos said. The Miami Beach, Florida-based company is also offering free access by all IATA-members to its data platforms containing live capacity, pricing, and eBookings.
“I certainly hope that this contributes to regulating your business to some extent. And if you end up using the FBX Daily for something interesting please let us know,” Freightos Group CMO Ethan Buchman said in a release. “API access or historical data downloads are still not enabled by default but if you’re a non-profit or healthcare professional dealing with COVID-19 and think that can help, please let us know.”
New Plymouth, Idaho-based truckstop.com says its plan will likewise reinforce those efforts by offering:
- the first 10,000 non-customer carriers and brokers to sign up for Truckstop.com Load Board Pro will receive a license for one free month from their date of sign-up,
- all current customers will have access to additional free services, discounts, helpful articles, and offers from Truckstop.com partners, including
- a free one-month subscription for all current customers to FreightWaves’ “Sonar,” an online freight intelligence and forecasting platform.
“We are partnering with Truckstop during the month of April to help carriers and brokers find more spot loads and the best rates to keep running and to stay profitable,” FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller said in a release. “The market is going through unprecedented disruption—certain shippers are seeing massive surges and other shippers are completely shut down. By combining forces, we hope that carriers and brokers will use SONAR to monitor and analyze the market, while matching actual loads on Truckstop.com.”
• To see all our coverage of the coronavirus and how it's affecting the supply chain, go to dcvelocity.com/coronavirus. Bookmark that page to get the latest.
• And check here for our resource hub providing virus-related information from industry groups, government agencies, humanitarian groups, and vendors.
