Transportation management system with AI route optimisation, multi-carrier rate shopping, real-time shipment tracking, and automated customs documentation — delivering $18M in annual freight savings across 400+ integrated carriers.
NorthStar Logistics managed 400+ carrier relationships entirely in spreadsheets. Rate shopping was done by email, route optimisation by experienced dispatchers' intuition, and customs documentation by a 6-person team spending 4 hours per cross-border shipment on manual paperwork. Customers received no real-time tracking — only a promised delivery window that was breached 28% of the time.
We built FreightIQ in 20 weeks: a full TMS with Google OR-Tools-powered route optimisation, 400+ carrier EDI integration, real-time GPS tracking aggregation, automated customs document generation from shipment manifests, and a self-service shipper portal — achieving $18M in annual freight savings.
Rate negotiations, capacity commitments, and performance tracking for 400+ carriers lived in a patchwork of spreadsheets maintained by a team of 3 operations analysts. No real-time rate comparison, no automated carrier selection.
Cross-border shipments required 4 hours of manual document preparation per shipment: commercial invoices, packing lists, HS code lookup, certificates of origin, and export declarations — all done by hand from shipment manifests.
Shippers had no self-service tracking. They called NorthStar's operations team for status updates — consuming 35% of ops team capacity on inbound status calls rather than problem-solving or exception management.
Route planning for multi-stop LTL shipments was done by experienced dispatchers using local knowledge. Optimal routes were missed consistently, costing an estimated 28% premium over algorithmically optimised routing.
Many of NorthStar's 400+ carrier partners communicated exclusively via EDI X12 (204 tenders, 214 shipment status, 990 responses). Building and maintaining EDI integrations with each carrier individually was technically and operationally unscalable.
Getting a new shipper onto the NorthStar network required 3 weeks of email exchanges, manual account setup, and integration work — losing deals to faster competitors during the onboarding window.
Google OR-Tools constraint programming solver for multi-stop route optimisation — handling time windows, vehicle capacity, driver hours-of-service constraints, and lane-specific carrier preferences. Real routes planned in under 8 seconds for networks of up to 200 stops.
Shipment manifest data (consignee, goods description, weight, value, country of origin) automatically populates all required customs documents with HS code lookup from a curated commodity database. Documents generated in 2 minutes, reviewed in 6.
Unified tracking aggregator pulling GPS position and status events from 400+ carriers via EDI 214 and carrier tracking APIs, normalised into a standard event model, and surfaced on a live shipper-facing map view updated every 5 minutes.
An ML model trained on 3 years of shipment data predicts optimal carrier selection per lane based on on-time performance, rate history, capacity availability, and shipper-specific SLA requirements — updated nightly with new performance data.
A centralised EDI translation layer handling all X12 transaction sets (204/214/990/210) with per-carrier profile management. New carrier EDI onboarding reduced from 6 weeks to 5 days. Automated acknowledgment handling and exception alerts for missing ASNs.
A shipper-facing portal enabling instant quote generation, booking, document upload, real-time tracking, and invoice management — all without NorthStar operations team involvement. Shipper onboarding from 3 weeks to same-day account activation.
Optimised routes live on 12 pilot lanes. 15% freight cost reduction in pilot, validating the OR-Tools model against NorthStar's historical spend. First automated customs documents generated — 4-hour process replaced by 8-minute automated generation in pilot.
All 400+ carriers integrated via EDI translation layer. 28% blended freight cost reduction across all lanes. Shipper portal live — status call volume down 72%. NorthStar ops team refocused from reactive status management to proactive exception resolution.
$18M cumulative annual savings realised. NorthStar won 3 major enterprise shipper contracts citing FreightIQ's real-time tracking and self-service capabilities as the primary differentiators over incumbents. Customs team headcount reduced from 6 to 2.
"FreightIQ did in 20 weeks what our IT team had been trying to build for 3 years. The route optimization alone saves $18M a year. Our shippers can self-serve, our ops team has real-time visibility, and our customs team went from 4-hour document prep to 8 minutes. It's transformed how we compete for enterprise freight contracts."
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