Software & systems
Freight exchange (load board)
In one sentence
A freight exchange is a marketplace where carriers publish available vehicles and brokers or shippers publish available loads, so that spot capacity and spot freight can find each other quickly.
Overview
The exchange solves one problem very well: finding a truck for a load, or a load for a truck, today. Members post offers, search by lane and date, and contact each other directly. European examples include TimoCom, Teleroute and Trans.eu; the price is a subscription for access, not a commission on the movement.
What an exchange does not do is run the business around the movement. It does not hold your customers' agreed rates, does not compute your sell price from your buy rate, does not keep your margin per customer and does not stop your customer seeing what you paid.
Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and is complementary to an exchange, not a replacement for it. Cargavo does not search capacity, does not post loads and has no integration with any freight exchange. It prices from your own carrier rate grids, applies your margin server-side, and shows customers a sell price only.
How does a freight exchange work?
Members subscribe, then post loads or available vehicles with lane, date and equipment. Others search the board and contact the poster directly to agree a price. The exchange provides the meeting place and member vetting, not the contract.
The mechanics are simple, which is the point — speed is the product. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and does none of this; it is worth being precise about who does what.
| Function | Freight exchange | TMS for freight brokers |
|---|---|---|
| Find spot capacity | Yes | No |
| Store your carrier rate grids | No | Yes |
| Compute buy and sell | No | Yes |
| Keep margin private | No | Yes |
| Customer portal in your brand | No | Yes |
Most brokers who use an exchange use it for a minority of movements — the ones a contracted carrier cannot cover — while the recurring business runs on negotiated grids.
Does a freight exchange replace a TMS?
No. An exchange finds capacity for one movement; a TMS holds the rates, the margins, the customers and the history that make a brokerage a business. They answer different questions and most brokers end up using both.
The clearest way to see the difference is to ask what disappears if you stop paying. Cancel the exchange and you lose access to spot capacity. Cancel the TMS and you lose your pricing, your customer records and your margin history.
- Exchange — a market. Optimised for finding someone, fast, on a lane you do not cover.
- TMS for freight brokers — a system of record. Optimised for pricing correctly, repeatedly, and protecting the margin.
Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and stores the buy rate, the sell rate and the margin on every quote and shipment, whether the capacity came from a contracted carrier or from an exchange. A spot buy is simply a buy rate entered per shipment.
What does a freight exchange not protect?
Your margin and your customer relationship. An exchange prices the movement between you and a carrier; it says nothing about what you should charge your customer, and it holds no record of the rate that customer was promised.
Buying well and selling well are separate skills, and only one of them happens on an exchange. The sell side needs three things an exchange has no view of:
- A margin rule per customer — a percentage using p/(1-m), or an absolute amount per weight bracket.
- A price the customer can obtain without a phone call, in their own language.
- A strict separation between what you paid and what you charge.
Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and computes the sell price server-side from the buy rate, keeping buy rates, margins and rate grids in a private record. A customer never sees them, never sees another customer, and never sees which carrier was used unless you tell them.
How do a freight exchange and a TMS work together?
Use the exchange to source capacity you do not have under contract, then record that buy rate in the TMS so the sell price, the margin and the customer history stay in one place. The two are not alternatives.
A realistic setup for a small brokerage: recurring lanes priced from contracted carrier grids, exceptional lanes sourced on an exchange, everything recorded in one system so the margin is visible at the end of the month.
Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and supports exactly that: rate grids for the recurring side, a buy rate entered per shipment for the spot side, and a single sell-price rule per customer either way. Quotes carry a Q-YYYY-NNNN reference and shipments an S-YYYY-NNNN reference.
Limits. Cargavo is not a freight exchange: it does not search capacity, does not post loads, does not vet carriers and has no integration with any exchange. It also has no carrier API and no EDI, and is not a fleet management tool. Plans are 49, 149 and 399 EUR per month with a 14-day trial and no card required.
Frequently asked questions
What is a load board?
Load board is the North American term for a freight exchange: a marketplace where available loads and available vehicles are posted so the two sides can find each other.
Is Cargavo a freight exchange?
No. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers. It does not search or publish capacity and has no integration with any freight exchange; it prices from the carrier rate grids you rebuild.
Can I use a freight exchange and a TMS at the same time?
Yes, and most brokers do. The exchange finds the capacity, the TMS records the buy rate, applies the margin rule and keeps the customer history.
Does an exchange set my selling price?
No. An exchange reflects what carriers are asking today. What you charge your customer is a margin decision that belongs in your own system.