Technology has brought about many useful advances in the trucking industry, but perhaps none is more convenient than the rise of load boards. Load boards allow carriers and shippers to come together and do business quickly and easily. Freight companies can post loads on the board and carriers can decide which posted loads they want to haul.

Load Board Basics

On a load board, shippers can post the details of the load or loads they need hauled. Most load boards will have a relatively simple interface to facilitate this process with fields for necessary information: pickup date, truck type needed, load origination and destination, load size and weight, number of loads, etc. Once a load has been posted it will be visible to potentially thousands of carriers.

 

Carriers on a load board can post the details of trucks at their disposal (truck type, size, maximum hauling capacity, origination, and destination) onto the load board and allow shippers to search for them. If carriers don’t want shippers calling them, they can simply search through the posted loads to find ones that fit their needs, then call the shipper to arrange business.

 

Load boards are useful for creating long-standing arrangements between freight companies and shipping companies. However, they are also useful for one-offs in either direction. A freight company may post a single load that is an exception to their standing contract with a shipper, thus needing someone else to take that one load, or a driver may have taken out one load, but not have a new load to take back towards home. The driver, or his or her dispatcher, can look on a load board for a single load needing to go in the direction the driver needs to go.

 

 

Why Load Boards Are Important

Other than simply facilitating business, load boards may help circumvent a possible problem in the near future. With the recent instabilities in the economy, experts are predicting that trucking demand will likely outstrip supply. The number of carriers and shippers have both decreased with recent economical shifts, but the shippers are recovering much faster than the carriers are. Therefore, there is a potential for considerably more freight than transporters.

 

Load boards can offset this problem by allowing for more efficient communication between shippers and carriers. If carriers are more easily able to search for and find specific loads, more loads will be fulfilled, and carriers that post their freight onto load boards can more quickly find a carrier who can take it. Speed is king in the transportation industry, and load boards facilitate speedy business between shippers and carriers.

 

 

Popular Load Boards

There are more than a few load boards online these days, but not all of them are equally effective. Some are free and some are paid, some have better tools than others, some see a lot of postings and some don’t. A good load board comes with tools to assist shippers and carriers in finding the right load or hauler for their specific need.

 

Free load boards have, of course, the benefit of not costing anything to post or accept. However, a load posted to a free board is most likely also posted to several other free load boards, as well, drastically increasing the amount of competition for the load. This may seem ideal for shippers, but many carriers get frustrated by the disappointingly low rates this competition creates, and so they stop doing business on the free boards.

 

Paid boards have different fees associated with their use; some have monthly charges and some charge per load posted or accepted. Loads posted to a paid board are usually exclusive to that board, meaning less competition for carriers. More professional carrier companies will use paid boards over free boards, meaning shippers who decide to post their load to paid boards are likely to find more professional business partners than on free boards. Paid boards are also more likely to be better developed and maintained, due to the increase in revenue a paid board would naturally have.

 

Some popular free load boards are:

 

• Touted as the #1 free load board online, Trulos has been operating since 2003. They have both state-wide searching as well as more targeted ZIP or city searching, as well as a mobile app for its load board.
• FreightFinder is a relatively simple load board without many added tools or perks, but it is still relatively popular and sees a good amount of postings.
• Free Freight Search. Free Freight Search has a good variety of tools for a free load board, including e-mail alerts for matching loads or trucks and credit report searching.
• Getloaded is the free sister board to DAT’s TruckersEdge. It nearly rivals Trulos in terms of popularity, but lacks some of that board’s search tools. Getloaded prides itself on being especially useful and friendly to smaller truckers.

 

The best paid load boards include:

 

• Shipmynt is unique among load boards, referring to itself as a “logistics social network.” Whatever you call it, Shipmynt is among the best paid load boards with tools that include: real-time load tracking from their computer or mobile app, real-time notifications when loads or trucks are posted near your location, rating system for all users, integrated chat, and much more. Shipmynt offers a free 90 day trial period, and $1 per load posted, won, or tracked after that.
• TruckersEdge. Evolved from the original Dial-A-Truck service started in 1978, TruckersEdge is one of the oldest and best known load boards. To fully utilize all of their tools, a monthly fee of $49.95 is charged, but you get tools for things like seeing how long a broker usually takes to pay and what the average rate for a route is.
• ReferATruck. This load board has been operating for 35 years, and while it may not be the absolute most popular board, it does have a core of die-hard users. ReferATruck has tie-ins with the major social websites to gather and distribute load information, and it even creates a smart contact list based upon the work calls you receive most frequently.
• Direct Freight Services. This load board has a free option with limited capabilities or a paid option that gives users access to their suite of advanced tools. Some of their paid tools include: full credit reports, improved load filtering, storing and sending documents and email, and text alerts. There is a 15-day trial option for drivers, carriers, or shippers who want to test their paid board’s capabilities.