In terms of trucking industry, you always have carriers and brokers. The broker will find a freight and then match it with trucks. Then, the trucks will carry that freight to its destination. it all sounds easy enough. However, the main challenge is how to connect those people with freight to those people with trucks.
In earlier times, brokers and carriers often developed one-on-one relationship with each other, later these relationship help them built a business network. The brokers can be rest assured that the carriers in their network could be trusted to pick up and deliver the freight safely and on time. The carriers can also assure that they would get paid for doing their job. That is to say, these type of networks proved to be effective because they have trust with each other. Brokers and carriers did their business in person, over the phone and later on by fax and e-mail. This way of doing business work out but it takes so much time and money.
Then, the Internet revolution happen. Later, people use the Internet to acquire information, purchase and sell items and services online. Doing business online can save more time. Before long, loadboards were developed. Loadboards are websites which allow companies to advertise their own freight and trucks with other members of the transportation community. With loadboards, companies could quickly grow their businesses and their network while saving money and time.
Loadboards gradually become popular, however negative issues also emerged. There were so many users connecting that it became very hard to determine exactly who the companies are dealing with. Brokers began to worry that their freight would not get delivered safely to their destination. Carriers worry too because they might not get paid rightly for their work. People were not sure anymore if they were working with companies they could trust. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are just some examples of social media applications that allow people to connect with others through the help of the Internet, while preserving their ability to grow and develop trusted networks of business partners and friends.
What will happen if you combine the loadboard technology and incorporate social media elements? The outcome would be a system that let users create their own community built from trusted networks.
Thus, the new Freight Matching Communities are born. Freight matching communities combines the ability of freight matching technology with the power of a social networking.
Like a group on LinkedIn or Facebook, users first post their excess freight and trucks within their exclusive trading community which they can set up using the carriers and brokers they know and relied on.
If the user did not end up finding a match in their private community, the posting will become available for the other members of the Community. If the posting still failed to get picked up, it will then be available to other users on their public Freight Matching loadboards.
Freight Matching Communities is the next popular thing of loadboard technology.