In this article we describe best practices to help improve the chances of successful capacity-email extracting.
Email Formatting Best Practices
Overall, in order to make an email that can be scraped easily and accurately, each truck needs every data point listed individually. Here are some best practices:
Put data into a table. In the example below, the carrier creates a word doc everyday and copies/pastes it into an email and sends it out. This works really well!
Keep the data in each column the same. For instance, if the first column is the city/state of the available truck then:
Only put the city/state in this column; don't occasionally put it in another column
Don't add extra info e.g. Chicago "The windy city", IL. Keep it simple at Chicago, IL
Another bad example: if in a column you’re telling us desired destinations don't arbitrarily put in "Power only" or similar. A human might understand this but a computer will not.
Once you pick a format for something, stick with it
If you give us city and state as "Los Angeles, CA" then keep it that way; don't switch halfway through the email to "Los Angeles CA"
Keep things simple
City/State for pickup: ideally city, abbreviated state (e.g. "Los Angeles, CA")
Destinations: ideally city, abbreviated state (e.g “New York, NY”) OR abbreviated state, abbreviated state (e.g “CA, AZ, NV”). We should pick up "CA, AZ, NV" but we will not get "CAAZNV".
Keep truck types simple "53' Dry Van" or "48' Flatbed"
Date & time format: "8/12 8am" - we will get the date and time here. Please don't write out "Friday August 12th" or similar
Keep destinations exact e.g., "Marion, IN" not "Towards Marion, IN"
If you have multiple trucks, put each as a separate row in the table
We cannot make any guarantees that we extract accessorials
Some things that we have repeatedly seen cause problems (in addition to items mentioned above):
Truck types that use underscores e.g., "53_dry_van"
When carrier puts their destination in one part of the email rather than next to every truck e.g., "I'm looking for loads to Colorado and here is a list of my trucks". Works better if carrier puts "Colorado" as desired destination in each row of table
How will the carrier know if their truck matches an available load?
If a carrier sends in a truck capacity email and we are able to match loads to them, we will send that carrier an email with the matches:
Note: sometimes, instead of using the proper trucklist inbox to send capacity, carriers will send these emails to one of your reps. Currently, if your rep receives that email and forwards it to the trucklist inbox, the extraction will not work because Parade will not link it to the carrier that originally sent the capacity email.
Keywords for Capacity Emails
Core Capacity Terms
“Truck List”
“Daily Truck List”
“Truck Availability”
“Unit Availability”
“Available Trucks”
“Available Units”
“Available Reefers”
“Open Trucks”
“Open Units”
“Capacity Available”
“Available Capacity”
“Equipment Available”
“Truck Posting”
“Equipment Posting”
Location-Based Phrases
“Current Truck Locations”
“Truck Locations”
“Units by Location”
“Equipment by Area”
“Capacity by State”
“Trucks in [State/City]”
“[State] Capacity”
“[Region] Open Trucks”
Equipment-Specific Terms
“Reefers”
“Dry Vans”
“Flatbeds”
“Step Decks”
“RGNs”
“Hotshots”
“Power Only”
“Box Trucks”
Time-Based Indicators
“Daily”
“Today”
“Tomorrow”
“Week of [Date]”
Day of week references (e.g., “Monday”, “Tuesday”, etc.)
“Updated”
“Update”
“AM Update”
“PM Update”
Common Variations & Abbreviations
“Avail Trucks”
“Avail Units”
“Cap Avail”
“Truck Avail”
“TL Capacity”
“OTR Trucks”
“Empty Trucks”
“Trucks Ready”
“Trucks Empty”
“Ready to Load”
“Looking for Loads”
Any other questions? Did we miss something? Please don't hesitate to reach out via the chat button in the lower right corner of this page, or reach out to our e-mail support@parade.ai