Cascade is a powerful tool that automates the load tendering process by offering loads to carriers in a tiered system, ensuring efficient and prioritized coverage for your repeated contract freight. With Cascade, you can assign specific carriers to different tiers, giving priority access to your top-tier partners at predefined rates and timeframes. This automation reduces manual intervention and speeds up load booking, enhancing the overall efficiency of your operations.
Each Cascade is configured with preset rates and time limits for each carrier tier, ensuring that if a load isn't booked within the designated time, it seamlessly moves to the next tier. Even after moving to the next tier, carriers from previous tiers can still accept the load, maximizing carrier engagement and ensuring optimal coverage.
With Cascade You Will
Automate Load Offers: Automatically offer loads to carriers in a tiered system, reducing manual workload and speeding up the tendering process.
Prioritize Core Carriers: Assign top-tier carriers to receive exclusive access to loads first, ensuring your key partners get priority.
Maximize Carrier Engagement: Even after the exclusivity period ends, carriers from previous tiers can still book loads, widening the pool of available carriers as the Cascade progresses.
Improve Load Coverage: If no carrier accepts the load within the Cascade, you can seamlessly push the offer to external load boards or syndication partners to drive additional coverage.
Optimize Rates and Timelines: Set specific rates and time windows for each carrier tier, allowing for flexible pricing strategies based on demand and carrier availability.
Handle Committed and Excess Volume: Assign daily load commitments to carriers and easily distribute excess volume to other tiers when needed.
Tailor Communication: Send rate confirmations and load offers to specific contacts within a carrier’s organization, ensuring the right people receive the necessary information.
Enhance Efficiency with Auto-Assignment: Automatically assign loads to carriers who have committed to specific volumes, eliminating the need for manual confirmation.
How Does Cascade Function?
Cascade is a waterfall tendering tool designed to help brokers automate load offers for repeated contract freight. Here's how it works:
Carrier Tiers: Cascade organizes carriers into tiers. The first tier of carriers gets the initial access to the load, and each tier can consist of one or more carriers. This tiered structure allows you to prioritize which carriers receive load offers first.
Time Limits for Tiers: Each tier is assigned a specific duration, typically between 5 and 90 minutes, during which the carriers up to that tier have exclusive access to the load can accept the load at a preset price. This time-bound structure ensures that load offers move efficiently through the carrier pool.
Progression Through Tiers: If no carrier in the active tier accepts the load within the given timeframe, the offer cascades to the next tier. However, carriers from previous tiers can still accept the load, even after the offer has moved to subsequent tiers, keeping the load available to them.
Fallback to Load Boards: If all tiers are exhausted and no carrier has accepted the load, you can opt to have the load posted to external load boards to broaden the pool of potential carriers. Cascade inherits the syndication status of the load, meaning if the load was set to go to a partner when no carrier accepted, it will still do so after the Cascade process ends.
By automating the tendering process, Cascade helps streamline load management, ensuring that loads are offered efficiently to the right carriers while maximizing coverage options.
PS: Tier Times are cumulative. As such, a Cascade with 3 tiers having 30 minutes of exclusivity each will have a total run time of 90 minutes, 30 per tier.
Configurability, Flexibility, and Even More Automation.
If a carrier is the only one in a tier, you can set them up for auto-assignment. When they reach that tier in the Cascade, they’ll automatically be assigned the load, and a rate confirmation (ratecon) will be sent from your TMS. No email will be sent to confirm interest, as the carrier has already committed to handling the specified load volume.
You can set up carriers with committed volume, which is the number of loads they agree to take daily (e.g., 10 loads per day). This can be a generic daily amount or customized by specific days of the week. This limit is applied not to the day a load is assigned to the carrier, but to the Pickup Date of each load assigned to them via that specific Cascade.
You can also share excess volume beyond the committed amount. For instance, if a carrier commits to 10 loads per day and an 11th load comes in, you can choose to send that extra load to them or move it to the next tier in the Cascade.
For larger carriers, you can configure the ratecon to be sent to different email addresses depending on the lane that you've created the Cascade for, ensuring the right Carrier team receives the information.
Tip: If needed, you can create a "quote-only" tier by setting the price to $0. This will invite carriers in that tier to submit a quote for the load, but they won’t be able to book it without an actual price.
Requirements and Setup Instructions
Load Volume: You have plenty of loads running through a lane.
Core Carriers: You have core carriers running that same lane.
Lead Time: You know in advance that you’re covering even more loads on that lane.
Setup Instructions
Navigate to the Smart Lanes Tab
Click on the "Smart Lanes" tab in your dashboard.
Identify Your Lane from Suggested Lanes
Use the Suggested Lanes feature to find lanes based on historical data and market trends or manually select the lane you want to automate with a Cascade.
View Lane
Once you've identified a lane, enter the necessary information (Origin, Destination, and Equipment Types) and select View Lane.
Add Your Cascade
On the Lane View page, click Add Cascade and follow the prompts to complete the setup.
Add Filters to Define Your Desired Load(s)
Use filters to narrow down the that will match with your Cascade.
Set Up Your Cascade Tiers
Add carriers for each tier, assign a Book Now price, and set the exclusive time window for each tier.
Add Internal Contacts (Optional)
CC internal team members on tender offers and important notifications, if desired.
Add Carrier Contacts
Select or add the contact for each carrier in your Cascade. This person will receive the load offer.
Set a Timeframe for the Cascade
Choose the start and end date for the Cascade.
Activate Cascade
Click Activate Cascade to get the Waterfall Tendering process running!
You can check Cascade messages on your Smart Lanes page for the lane where you configured the Cascade Lane Action, or directly on Messages > Outbound > Cascade Tenders.
FAQ
What Happens When I Activate a Cascade?
Let’s say you have a Flatbed lane from San Francisco, CA to Los Angeles, CA, and you set up a Cascade like this:
Top Tier: Carrier A, Carrier B, and Carrier C at $1200 with a 90-minute exclusivity period.
Second Tier: Carrier D and Carrier E at $1300 with a 60-minute exclusivity period.
When a load matches this lane, it will automatically be offered via email to Carrier A, Carrier B, and Carrier C for $1200. They have 90 minutes to book the load exclusively through the email link.
If none of them book the load in that time, it will be offered to Carrier D and Carrier E for $1300.
What if Top-Tier Carriers Miss Their Offer Period?
Even after the exclusivity period ends, carriers from previous tiers can still book the load if it’s available. For example, if Carrier A didn’t book during the 90-minute window but the load is still unclaimed, they can still book it after the window closes.
As the Cascade progresses, more carriers have the opportunity to book the load.
Can I Use the Same Carrier in Multiple Tiers?
Yes, a carrier can appear in multiple tiers. However, once a new offer is made to the same carrier in a later tier, the previous offer expires, and only the most recent one is valid.