The Freight Visibility Problem No One’s Talking About

Most brokerages have a shared inbox. Some have a few. And in a lot of cases, those inboxes are messy. They’re full of quote requests, trucklists, follow-ups, and plenty of “just checking in” emails from carriers trying to move their trucks.

It’s easy to treat the inbox as just a place to communicate. But it holds more value than most teams realize. It’s a real-time record of how your carrier network behaves. When carriers quote, how often they follow up, which lanes they focus on, and whether those offers actually turn into booked freight.

For some teams, that data is tracked manually. Other times, reps rely on memory or instinct. But the patterns are already there in the inbox. The problem is that they’re buried under volume and chaos, and they’re not being captured in a way the team can use.

Most of your carrier signals are coming through email

Parade’s internal data shows that about three times more carrier activity comes in through email than over the phone. That includes quotes, trucklists, capacity updates, and follow-ups.

So while some brokerages focus on missed calls or response speed on the phone, the majority of carrier engagement is sitting in the inbox. If your team isn’t structured to capture and act on that engagement, then most of your coverage opportunities are at risk of being missed.

Not all engagement is created equal

It’s one thing to receive a quote. It’s another to understand how reliable or consistent that carrier is.

Some carriers quote across multiple lanes. Some show up every week. Others only reach out when the load is posted publicly. That level of nuance is hard to track by memory. Without visibility into the patterns, all quotes tend to get treated the same. The team may miss a chance to prioritize the carriers who are genuinely trying to earn your freight.

Good carriers get missed

Plenty of strong carriers quote consistently but don’t win the load. Sometimes their pricing is off, but often the issue is timing or visibility. The quote came in after the load was already covered. It got buried in a thread. The rep saw it but forgot to respond.

These aren’t intentional misses. They’re the result of inbox volume and a lack of structure. But over time, they add up to missed coverage and missed opportunities to reuse known, interested carriers.

Response time is hard to track without structure

Everyone knows fast response times matter. But few brokerages have a way to measure how long it takes a rep to reply to an inbound quote. Did it sit for an hour? Did the carrier send a follow-up and still not get a response? Did someone cover the load and forget to close the loop?

Without structure around those interactions, there’s no feedback loop. And without that, the carrier’s interest disappears.

Reuse depends on visibility

Most brokerages want to increase carrier reuse, but it’s hard to improve reuse if you can’t see past activity. If a dispatcher quoted a lane last month but didn’t get the load, that quote probably got lost unless someone made a point to track it. If that same lane comes up again, and no one thinks to reach out to them, that capacity is wasted.

The inbox already knows who’s quoted what, when, and at what rate. The problem is that the system doesn’t remember, and most brokerages don’t have the tools in place to connect those dots automatically.

The inbox holds more value than it gets credit for

Not every brokerage handles this the same way. Some have better systems than others. But in most cases, the inbox sees things the rest of the business never does. Carrier engagement, response patterns, quote behavior, lost follow-ups, and missed reuse opportunities all live there.

The teams that are getting ahead aren’t sorting through this by hand. They’re using tools that capture these signals automatically and turn them into structured data the team can actually use. Quotes get logged. Carrier intent gets tracked. Reuse becomes something you can act on instead of something you hope for.

The capacity is already reaching out. The question is whether your systems are built to respond to it—or just react to it.