The Track-&-Trace Agent sends scheduled check-ins to carriers by email and SMS, reads whatever comes back — typos, Spanish, silence — updates your TMS, and interrupts a human only when something is actually wrong. Your reps stop asking "where's the truck?" forty times a day.
15–25%
of a brokerage's ops headcount cost goes to tracking and check-call work.
INDUSTRY RESEARCH · RANGE ESTIMATE4×
check touches per load — dispatch, pickup, in-transit, delivery — each one phone tag today.
TYPICAL · CADENCE IS CONFIGURABLE0
customer-facing messages sent without a rep behind them. Day-one policy, not a promise.
APPROVAL GATE · SEE IT BELOWNine loads. Carrier replies stream in exactly as messy as real life. Watch the board update itself — and watch the two loads that actually need a human light up and go to one.
Board · your TMS view
| Load | Lane | Carrier | Last contact | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4407 | LAREDO TX → MEMPHIS TN | RGR TRANSPORT | 06:55 | IN TRANSIT |
| 4411 | CHICAGO IL → ATLANTA GA | BLUE OX CARRIERS | 06:58 | IN TRANSIT |
| 4417 | JOLIET IL → NASHVILLE TN | MAPLE LEAF EXPRESS | 06:48 | OUT FOR DELIVERY |
| 4420 | DALLAS TX → DENVER CO | HIGH PLAINS TRK | 06:52 | AT PICKUP |
| 4423 | KANSAS CITY MO → COLUMBUS OH | CROSSTIE LOGISTICS | 03:22 | IN TRANSIT · STALE |
| 4426 | FRESNO CA → PORTLAND OR | SIERRA HAUL LLC | 07:01 | IN TRANSIT · 36.4°F |
| 4428 | SAVANNAH GA → CHARLOTTE NC | PALMETTO FREIGHT | 06:40 | IN TRANSIT |
| 4431 | EL PASO TX → OKLAHOMA CITY OK | LONE STAR DISPATCH | 06:58 | DISPATCHED |
| 4433 | MINNEAPOLIS MN → MILWAUKEE WI | NORTH SHORE CARRIER | 06:50 | IN TRANSIT |
Check-in feed · outbound + carrier replies
SCRIPTED SIMULATION, SAMPLE DATA, TIME COMPRESSED. PRODUCTION RUNS AGAINST YOUR TMS AND YOUR CARRIER CONTACTS. NOTE THE GATE: THE DELAY NOTICE TO THE CUSTOMER WAITED FOR A REP. THE AGENT NEVER TELLS A CUSTOMER ANYTHING A HUMAN DIDN'T APPROVE.
Most tracking tools treat fraud as an edge case. In this market it's a Tuesday. Here is the full exception taxonomy the agent runs — including the double-brokering red flags. Every threshold is set with you in week one.
| Code | Trigger | What the agent does | Who's pinged | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EXC-01 LATE | ETA slips past appointment by your threshold (default 2h) | Re-confirms with driver, drafts customer delay notice — held for rep approval | Assigned rep | ≤30 MIN |
| EXC-02 SILENT | No parseable reply after 3 attempts / 4h (configurable) | Rotates contacts — driver cell, dispatch, email — then assembles a contact sheet and hands off | Assigned rep | ≤5 MIN AT THRESHOLD |
| EXC-03 LOC MISMATCH | Claimed location conflicts with ELD/GPS ping or a prior reply | Freezes auto-updates on the load, packages the evidence side by side | Rep + ops manager | ≤5 MIN |
| EXC-04 TEMP | Reefer reading outside the rate-con band | Immediate driver confirm request, load flagged, claim-clock note started | Assigned rep | ≤5 MIN |
| EXC-05 IDENTITY | Reply arrives from a phone or domain not on the carrier record; "our truck" becomes "their truck" | Hard stop on the load. Evidence pack: numbers, headers, timestamps. No auto-acknowledgment | Ops manager + you | IMMEDIATE |
| EXC-06 RE-ASSIGNED MC | Carrier mentions another MC on the load, asks to re-sign the rate con, or requests a payment redirect | Hard stop. Full thread + carrier-record diff goes up. Classic double-broker pattern | Ops manager + you | IMMEDIATE |
What the agent never does
It never confronts a carrier about fraud, never threatens, never bluffs. Accusing a carrier is a human job with legal weight. The agent's job is to notice fast, freeze the load, and put organized evidence in front of a person who can act.
Why this is the selling point
A rep juggling 40 loads misses the one reply that came from the wrong phone number. The agent doesn't, because checking sender identity against the carrier record on every single message costs it nothing. Boring vigilance, at volume.
Check-ins go out under your brokerage's name on a schedule you set. Drivers reply however they reply. That's the whole point.
| Trigger | When | Channel | Asks for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dispatch confirmed | +15 MIN | EMAIL + SMS | Intro, check-in expectations, opt-out |
| Pickup appointment | APPT −2H / +1H | SMS | Loaded confirmation, seal # |
| In transit | DAILY 07:00 | SMS, EMAIL FALLBACK | City/state + ETA |
| Day before delivery | 14:00 | SMS | Final ETA confirm |
| Delivery appointment | APPT +1H | POD |
Sample check-in · email
Sample check-in · SMS
No app, no portal, no "click here to update your status." Drivers text back like they text everyone else — the parser does the work.
| Raw carrier reply | Parsed result |
|---|---|
| "in mempis fueling, eta 1430" | LOC MEMPHIS TN (TYPO TOLERATED) · ETA 14:30 → TMS |
| "Load 4417 delivered POD attached" | DELIVERED · POD FILED → TMS |
| "si, cargado. llegando el jueves 6pm" | LOADED · ETA THU 18:00 → TMS |
| "this is martys wife, he says hes thru amarillo" | LOC AMARILLO TX · LOW CONFIDENCE → HELD FOR HUMAN, NOT WRITTEN TO TMS |
| "Out of Office: returning Monday" | NON-ANSWER → RETRY VIA DISPATCH LINE |
| "🚛💨" | UNPARSEABLE → STRUCTURED RE-ASK SENT |
| (silence) | RE-PING 2H → ALT CONTACT 3H → HUMAN AT 4H |
EVERY FORMAT ABOVE LIVES IN THE NIGHTLY REGRESSION SUITE, RUN AGAINST A CORPUS OF REAL FREIGHT MESSAGES. WHEN A NEW FORMAT BREAKS THE PARSER IN PRODUCTION, IT JOINS THE SUITE THE SAME WEEK. LOW-CONFIDENCE PARSES NEVER TOUCH YOUR TMS.
The agent writes to Aljex, Tai, McLeod, Turvo, or Ascend the way a careful dispatcher would — except it cites its sources. Nothing is overwritten; everything is attributable, timestamped, and reversible.
Attributable
Each status change links to the exact SMS or email that caused it — original text retained, headers and all. "Why does the board say Memphis?" is a one-click answer.
Timestamped
When the claim clock or a customer dispute starts, you can reconstruct the load's whole conversation in order. Detention arguments love timestamps.
Reversible
If the parser got it wrong, a rep reverts the field in one click. The bad write stays in the log — flagged — and becomes a regression test that night.
Note the fourth line: the customer-facing notice shows a rep's name, because a rep sent it. On day one, every customer-facing message works that way. Months in, you can promote routine status updates to auto-send — lane by lane, customer by customer, and you can demote them just as fast. That's the trust ladder, and you hold it.
400
4.0 min
$28/hr
Check-call hours / mo
—
Labor cost / mo
—
Desk cost / mo
—
FTE equivalent freed
—
—
ILLUSTRATIVE MODEL. ASSUMES 4 CHECK TOUCHES PER LOAD (DISPATCH, PICKUP, IN-TRANSIT, DELIVERY); "MINUTES PER TOUCH" INCLUDES PHONE TAG, VOICEMAIL, AND RE-KEYING. DESK COST = $2,000/MO INCL. 500 PROCESSED ITEMS + $1.50/ITEM AFTER, WHERE ONE ITEM = ONE TRACKED LOAD, ALL ITS CHECK-INS INCLUDED. EXCLUDES THE $7,500 ONE-TIME SETUP — AND THE SAME RETAINER ALSO COVERS THE QUOTE AGENT, SO ATTRIBUTING ALL OF IT TO TRACKING IS THE CONSERVATIVE READ.
Two different alarms matter: when a load goes wrong, and when the agent itself goes wrong. Both have written response targets — they go in the pilot agreement as commitments, not aspirations.
| Event | Commitment |
|---|---|
| Critical exception (identity flag, no-response 4h, temp) | REP PINGED ≤5 MIN · SMS + EMAIL + BOARD FLAG |
| No ack on a critical exception | RE-PAGE ESCALATION CONTACT AT 15 MIN |
| Routine exception (ETA slip) | ≤30 MIN OR NEXT DIGEST — YOUR CHOICE |
| After-hours critical | YOUR ON-CALL, THEN OURS, ≤30 MIN |
| Failure mode | Commitment |
|---|---|
| Heartbeat missed (agent down) | INDEPENDENT MONITOR PAGES US ≤10 MIN |
| Expected check-ins not sent (silent failure) | ALERT TO US ≤15 MIN |
| Parse-confidence drift below floor | TMS WRITES AUTO-HELD · PAGED SAME HOUR |
| Nightly regression failure | NO MORNING SENDS UNTIL A HUMAN CLEARS IT |
Nightly
Regression suite runs against the real-message corpus — including every format that ever broke the parser.
Continuously
Drift alarms watch parse confidence and reply rates. Degrading quietly is the failure we engineered against hardest.
Weekly
A report in dollars and loads: check-ins handled, hours displaced, exceptions caught, anything we got wrong — listed, not buried.
THE DEAD-MAN SWITCH IS DELIBERATE: THE THING THAT WATCHES THE AGENT IS NOT THE AGENT. IF THE HARNESS ITSELF GOES QUIET, A SEPARATE MONITOR PAGES A HUMAN AT DEADHEADDESK — AT 2 AM, THAT HUMAN IS JACOB.
Run the 30-day pilot on one customer's loads. Shadow mode first, approval gates throughout, hard before/after numbers at the end.
$2,500 PILOT (CREDITED TO SETUP) · $7,500 SETUP · $2,000/MO INCL. 500 ITEMS · $1.50/ITEM AFTER · ALJEX / TAI / McLEOD / TURVO / ASCEND