Dashdoc alternative for freight brokers

Start by giving Dashdoc credit for what it actually does. The site presents three products: Dashdoc TMS, Dashdoc Flow (appointment scheduling for logistics sites) and Dashdoc eCMR. Its stated promises — “Increase productivity by automating tedious tasks”, “Plan profitable shipments in a few seconds” — describe operations: dematerialised consignment notes, faster invoicing, waiting times and site flow. The company states it serves over 1,500 transportation professionals and names clients including Bouygues Construction, SUEZ and FedEx, with offices in Paris, Nantes and Antwerp. This is a real product in a real market.

The blind spot is not a weakness of Dashdoc; it is a scope. Those functions assume you have vehicles, drivers and loading docks.

Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers — for the intermediary with no truck and no driver. Their asset is a purchase grid. Four models cover European road freight: weight_zone (zones × weight brackets), pallet (price by pallet count × zone), mpl_bracket (linear-metre / LDM brackets) and hybrid_weight (a flat rate below a threshold, a rate above it). Taxable weight (LDM floor, configurable volumetric ratio), configurable rounding, indexed fuel surcharge and options such as tail lift, ADR, ad valorem insurance and appointment booking sit on top.

Describe the job as it is. A request arrives: 3 pallets, 1.8 tonnes, Lyon → Barcelona, tail lift on delivery. Within minutes the broker must find the right carrier, work out what that carrier will invoice, add their margin, and send the customer a firm price.

In Cargavo, that sequence is the product. One rebuilt grid produces two prices:

• The purchase price — what the carrier charges you, computed on their grid, taxable weight and fuel surcharge included.
• The sell price — the same engine, with that customer’s margin rule: percent, computed as p/(1-m), or absolute per bracket.

The margin is applied server-side. That is an architecture decision, not a display decision: a quote’s financials live outside the reach of the customer portal. Your customer sees the sell price, their quote Q-YYYY-NNNN, then their shipment S-YYYY-NNNN once accepted — never the purchase price, never the margin, never your grids, never your other customers.

The customer portal is included in every plan, and the Scale plan adds white-label branding: price simulation, quote requests even for a lane you hold no grid for, booking, history and contextual messaging.

No judgement in that: many European vendors quote after scoping, which is defensible when scope varies widely between customers. It is simply a difference in buying motion, and it matters to a small firm.

Cargavo bills the organization: Starter 3 members, Growth 10, Scale 30, and headcount inside a plan does not change the price. Seven currencies are available — EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, CAD, MAD, PLN — and the interface runs in French, English, Spanish and German.

The question is not “which is the better TMS” but “what is your trade today”. Three cases:

• You run trucks — vehicle planning, drivers, consignment notes, loading slots. Dashdoc handles that day; Cargavo handles none of it.
• You are a pure broker — you buy capacity and resell it. Your day is spent in grids, margins and quotes. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers built for that day.
• You do both — own fleet plus subcontracting. The two tools address different halves of the problem and barely overlap.

Be explicit about our limits, because they are wide: Cargavo has no eCMR, no driver app, no vehicle planning, no telematics and no dock management, and it has no carrier API and no EDI — carriers are onboarded by rebuilding their grid from Excel or CSV. It is not a freight exchange either: Cargavo does not find you a truck.