Overview
Packer Freight, a third-party logistics provider in Green Bay, Wisconsin, supports its sister company, Packer Fastener, one of the industry’s leading distributors of threaded nuts and bolts. As both businesses grew, Packer Freight needed to handle more freight while staying lean, giving their team bandwidth to pursue higher-revenue opportunities.
The Challenge: Manual Processes and Change Management
Before implementing Cargo Chief, Packer Freight’s team faced a highly manual and time-consuming freight booking process. By operating in both a cradle-to-grave and split model, wasteful effort and redundant tasks led the need for a uniform yet customizable solution
Time-Consuming Spot Freight: Up to 20 phone calls might yield just one booking, wasting valuable time.
Repetitive Bulk Shipments: Repeated tasks for the same carriers slowed operations, with no easy path to scale except adding headcount.
Leadership Concerns: Would automating freight booking disrupt workflows, weaken relationships with carriers, or complicate processes for the team?
Packer Freight needed a unified, customizable solution to:
Automate carrier communication
Streamline freight tendering
Scale without sacrificing personal carrier relationships
The Breakthrough: Integrated Automation and Vetted Capacity
Packer Freight integrated Cargo Chief’s C4 platform within Logistically TMS, transforming their freight booking process through automation and efficiency.
By leveraging automated carrier outreach, the team eliminated the need for manual calls and emails, seamlessly connecting with carriers for both repeat and spot freight. The integration enabled real-time bidding and tendering, reducing manual follow-ups and accelerating the freight booking cycle:
Automated Carrier Outreach: Fewer phone calls and emails; real-time bidding/tendering speeds up freight booking.
Vetted Carrier Network: Keeping loads within trusted carriers reduces fraud risks and maintains service quality.
Rules Over Transactions: Packer Freight’s team now manages by exception, focusing on strategic decisions rather than repetitive tasks.
The Results: 44% of Loads Booked Digitally – Carriers Love It
Immediate Scalability: Within six months, 250 loads per month were booked automatically. Packer Freight is now on track to 550 automated loads per month without adding headcount.
Stronger Carrier Relationships: Less time on routine calls freed reps to build deeper partnerships, resulting in more strategic conversations rather than transactional interactions.
Fraud Prevention: Sticking to a vetted carrier network reduced risks, keeping high service standards and bolstering security.
Why It Matters: Eliminate Wasteful Effort and Drive Growth
A tight-knit integration with Packer Freight’s TMS, Logistically, doesn’t just begin with time savings and scalability, but delivers insights into operational efficiency.
In Q1 of 2025, Packer saw 77% of their offers convert to bookings driving a high likelihood of on target capacity. With a reply-to-offer rate of 140%, and reply-to-book at 107%, this means that more offers are converting to bookings without the back and forth of emails.
It’s obvious. Automate and scale, or drown in outdated processes.
Cargo Chief is redefining freight brokerage by delivering automation where it matters most, carrier engagement and freight booking.
By integrating directly into a broker’s TMS, Cargo Chief eliminates manual outreach, phone calls, and emails by automating the entire carrier communication process: from load matching to bidding and tendering. This streamlined workflow allows brokers to secure capacity faster, improve load coverage, and maintain operational consistency even during market volatility.
With intelligent features like real-time rate benchmarking, automated load distribution, and vetted carrier networks, brokers reduce their reliance on public load boards and avoid fraud, two major pain points in today’s logistics landscape. Users see up to a 140% reply-to-offer rate and a 107% reply-to-book rate, meaning more offers turn into booked loads without the endless back-and-forth.
Cargo Chief doesn’t just save time, it drives ROI.
Reduce your overhead and eliminate the hassle of booking freight.
