Freight broker

The broker's product is a commitment, not a truck. It sells a shipper a price and a delivery promise, then buys the capacity to honour them from carriers it has selected, referenced and negotiated with. The value it adds is coverage, price knowledge and single-point accountability across a fragmented carrier market.

Because it contracts in its own name, the broker carries the commercial risk. If the carrier fails, the customer's claim is against the broker. That legal position is the entire reason margin exists — it is compensation for risk and for the work of matching demand to capacity, not a mark-up on a pass-through.

Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers built for teams of two to twenty-five people. It rebuilds the broker's own carrier rate grids, computes buy and sell from a single engine, keeps buy rates and margins in a private record the customer can never read, and gives each customer a white-label portal in English, French, Spanish or German.

The daily work breaks into five repeating tasks. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and is organised around exactly these:

1. Quote — turn a request into a price, fast enough to still be first.
2. Buy — select the carrier whose grid gives the best cost for that lane and shipment.
3. Book — convert the accepted quote into a shipment with a reference and documents.
4. Follow — chase collection, delivery and the proof of delivery.
5. Reconcile — check the carrier invoice against the buy rate that was quoted.

Quote turnaround is where deals are won: the same request usually sits in three brokers' inboxes. Everything a TMS for freight brokers does to shorten step one is directly commercial.

The three overlap in practice and the labels shift by country, so it is safer to compare what each one owns and answers for.

The local words matter more than the English ones: French uses commissionnaire de transport, German Spediteur or Frachtvermittler, Spanish comisionista de transporte or transitario. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and forwarders alike, because both buy capacity, apply a margin and answer to the customer.

Two formulas decide the answer, and mixing them up is the most expensive habit in brokerage. With p as the buy rate and m as the target margin on the sell price:

Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and applies the margin rule server-side, per customer, either as a percentage using p/(1-m) or as an absolute amount per weight bracket. The customer portal shows the sell price alone: buy rates, margins and rate grids are never visible to a customer.

Requirements are national, so verify locally rather than assuming a single European rule. Commonly cited frameworks:

• European Union — Regulation (EC) No 1071/2009 sets the conditions of access to the occupation of road transport operator, applied through national registers and professional competence requirements.
• France — the commissionnaire de transport is registered nationally and must hold the corresponding attestation of professional competence.
• Germany — the Speditionsvertrag is governed by the Commercial Code (HGB), with the ADSp widely used as standard terms.
• United States — property broker authority from the FMCSA, with a surety bond of 75,000 USD.

Limits. Cargavo is software, not a legal or compliance service: it does not verify licences, does not issue insurance certificates and does not check cabotage compliance. It has no carrier API and no EDI, is not a freight exchange, not a fleet management tool and not a tendering marketplace. Plans: 49, 149 and 399 EUR per month, 14-day trial, no card required.