Meeting Carriers Where They Want to Buy: The AI Unlock for Brokerages

Freight moves fast. Carriers move faster. The brokers who are winning today aren’t the ones trying to force carriers into their way of doing business. They are the ones adapting to meet carriers where they already are—on the phone, in their inbox, and on their terms.

This is a mindset shift the industry has been slow to adopt. But it is becoming clearer by the day that the brokerages willing to meet carriers where they want to buy are the ones positioned to move more freight, strengthen relationships, and drive better margins.

With CoDriver AI—voice and email capabilities now fully embedded into Parade’s Capacity Management Platform—we are seeing groundbreaking insights on how brokerages can better engage carriers. It is changing the way we think about freight coverage altogether.

Early data already paints a clear picture.

We are seeing that 80 percent of inbound calls and emails are coming from carriers operating fleets of fewer than 25 trucks. Small and mid-sized fleets are the ones reaching out first, trying to get trucks covered. Yet these are often the carriers that slip through the cracks.

The communication split is also shifting. For every call a brokerage receives, there are three emails. Email is becoming the preferred channel for initial outreach, but phone calls still dominate when it comes to the most time-sensitive or complex conversations.

Interestingly, 90 percent of inbound calls come from dispatchers managing fleets between 15 and 50 trucks. These are the small and mid-sized operations that keep the industry moving. They want to engage, but they need brokers to meet them with the right channel at the right time.

On the outbound side, nearly 90 percent of broker outreach calls are targeting portfolio fleets with 50 trucks or more. Brokerages are racing to lock in larger volumes of capacity before those trucks get posted on the boards.

The takeaway is simple: the way brokerages interact with carriers today is misaligned with how carriers prefer to engage.

The majority of inbound activity—the signals that can give you the first shot at available capacity—is coming from smaller fleets. Yet much of that data is lost in fragmented workflows, siloed inboxes, and missed calls.

That is a problem. It is a massive missed opportunity.

When you fail to capture that real-time data, you are not just losing a chance to cover a load. You are missing out on valuable pricing intelligence, relationship-building opportunities, and margin potential.

This is where CoDriver AI changes the game.

Every carrier interaction, whether by phone or by email, now feeds directly into a unified intelligence layer inside Parade’s Capacity Management Platform. Instead of losing information across multiple tools or relying on manual notes, brokers can automatically capture and organize pricing and capacity data in real time.

This makes it possible to engage dispatchers on their terms, respond faster to available trucks, and automate the low-value conversations that slow teams down. It frees up brokers to focus on high-value relationships—the conversations that drive true growth and profitability.

The future of freight brokerage is not just about faster responses. It is about smarter engagement. It is about aligning your process with how carriers want to work, building trust through the right channels, and using better data to cover more freight with stronger margins.

This is only the beginning.

The brokerages that adapt now—who invest in smarter carrier engagement powered by AI and real-time intelligence—will be the ones who lead the market tomorrow. The ones who wait will be stuck playing catch-up.

If you want to see how Parade is transforming the way brokerages engage carriers and win freight, let’s talk. Schedule a demo and see CoDriver AI in action.