Trax, which helps companies manage their shipping spending, and Truckstop.com, which operates a marketplace for shippers and companies with items to move, on Wednesday (June 22) announced a new collaboration they said will help shippers, brokers and carriers work with each other more effectively.
Trax gives shippers visibility into the performance and cost of carriers’ services, while Truckstop provides carriers with onboarding technology and legal compliance based on lane, carrier and region.
By working together, the companies aim to provide supply chain information that should smooth out wrinkles in shipper-carrier relationships.
“Visibility into rate selection is vital and making on-time payments and having working capital are essential to maintaining good business relationships,” Chris Cassidy, executive vice president of global sales and strategic partnerships at Trax, said. “A goal of this partnership is to create value for shippers and carriers with joint solutions that improve carrier onboarding and rate management selection effectiveness by accessing real-time truckload market rate data.”
Trax operates in North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe. Trax states on its website that it has 64,000 active accounts serviced by seven offices and helps with 8 million loads per year.
In February, Trax entered into an arrangement that lets the company offer extended payment on invoices owed to it.
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Piggybacking off a consumer shopping trend toward buy now, pay later services, the company’s offering is designed to create extended working capital for shippers — the companies that are trying to distribute something — and improved cash flow for carriers, or the companies that carry the products.
“It is buy now, pay later,” Josh Bouk, president and chief revenue officer at Trax, told PYMNTS. “What this program does is, by using a buy now, pay later strategy that aligns with those internal DPO goals, all it does is it creates a service that says, ‘Yep, you can buy it now, Trax will pay for it… and then you can pay us back in alignment with your DPO objectives,’” Bouk said.