3-way combo emerges for digital load matching: DAT, AscendTMS and Convoy

The Convoy tech stack acquired by DAT, which so far had not yet made a notable impact at the company known mostly for its load board, is being integrated into the AscendTMS transportation management system, a significant step in its revival.

AscendTMS is known mostly as serving small to medium sized brokers and carriers with its TMS offering. It has a small base of shipper clients as well.

Tim Higham, the CEO of AscendTMS, said in an email to FreightWaves that the integration of the Convoy Platform into AscendTMS, which was developed at now-shuttered digital brokerage Convoy, “is one of the most comprehensive we’ve ever done with any partner.” It has gone live and is available to AscendTMS customers.

There are a wide variety of other software solutions available through the AscendTMS system; for example, Higham said the TMS connects to about 90 factoring companies including Love’s Travel Centers.

What Higham referred to as the “old” Convoy had been available through AscendTMS before the digital broker closed its doors in October 2023. The Convoy platform was sold to Flexport which flipped it relatively rapidly to DAT (NASDAQ: ROP) in July.

DAT is a subsidiary of Roper Technologies.

“The old Convoy was built into AscendTMS many years ago,” Higham said in an email to FreightWaves. After Convoy closed, he said, “the old Convoy was stripped out, but the technology that DAT eventually obtained, renamed Convoy Platform, is now fully baked into AscendTMS.”

“This new marketplace or exchange approach allows any broker, big or small, to plug into the DAT Convoy Platform via their TMS and conduct digital freight matching and transacting inside their TMS, with the Convoy Platform controlling all of the data and communications between the broker and carrier,” Higham said.

The only access to the Convoy Platform is through a TMS, Higham added. “It must be plugged into a TMS to work, as the TMS systems contain all the needed data for the broker and carrier to work together digitally,” he said. There is no standalone offering of the Convoy Platform, he added.

AscendTMS is as of now the only “multi-tenant TMS that supports Convoy Platform,” Higham said.

A load posted to the DAT load board will cascade down into the Convoy Platform, Higham said, where the technology–long considered an industry leader–can “instantly match a load in the TMS with a certified and vetted Convoy Platform carrier.”

Higham described a process that he says will allow users of Convoy Platform to complete the booking of a load through full digitization.

The Convoy Platform will match broker and carrier or shipper and carrier, will be the tool for negotiation and acceptance of bids and offers, distribute whatever corresponding information is needed for the load to be dispatched as well as post-loading documentation, and both pays the carrier and bills the broker.

The process, Higham said is “100% digital and automated.” While the inevitable issues with some percentage of the loads will come up and be rectified by the old-fashioned methods–phone, email, messaging–”for most loads, 100% of the process is fully digital and done between AscendTMS and the Convoy Platform app.”

While on the surface that sounds similar to what other digital brokerage services do, Higham said the DAT/Convoy Platform offering does not act as a broker.

Higham described the Convoy Platform’s capabilities within the TMS as an “interpreter.” The platform “moves data back and forth in real time, and it’s the digital conduit that makes everything work between the broker and the carrier,” he said.

HIgham said in a digital brokerage operation like Uber Freight or JB Hunt 360, those companies are the brokers, so they own the brokerage technology. What is driving the Convoy Platform offering is a software offering that is like a conduit, not brokerage technology which continues to reside with the 3PL utilizing the Convoy Platform..

The marriage between AscendTMS and the Convoy/DAT link can be seen as another skirmish in what has been referred to as the “load board wars.” Besides the big two of DAT and Truckstop.com, there are load board-like offerings out from Trimble (NYSE: TRMB), and the issue of fraud on load boards has helped drive initiatives at existing companies.

Convoy Platform’s presence in the AscendTMS offering does not alter services it already had, Higham said. Manual postings to DAT can still be made through the TMS, as well as making loads visible to the Convoy Platform solution. AscendTMS also has access to other major load boards like Truckstop, Higham said.

In a LinkedIn post, Bill Driegert, executive vice president of the Convoy Platform at DAT, said the value of the Convoy Platform offering “(needs) a leading TMS that has integrated at every step of the process to simplify and automate it for you.”

He said AscendTMS has “jumped in with two feet and (built) the most complete end to end integration of the Convoy Platform.”