Key Takeaways
- Turvo stands out for freight brokers and 3PLs trying to increase operating capacity without adding the same amount of administrative work, connecting planning, execution, communication, integrations, documents, and settlement so information can move with the shipment instead of being repeatedly re-entered or chased.
- McLeod Software is a strong fit for carrier, brokerage, and hybrid transportation operations that want dispatch, load planning, carrier management, accounting, automation, and integrations within a more connected operating environment.
- Infios Transportation Management is better suited to complex global and multimodal supply chains, combining enterprise transportation optimization, automated execution, visibility, analytics, and AI-assisted workflows across larger logistics networks.
A TMS can improve one part of your operation while leaving its biggest bottleneck untouched. Faster planning offers limited relief if employees still spend hours chasing shipment updates or gathering documents before finance can invoice.
Improving supply chain efficiency starts with identifying what holds the business back. Your priority might be handling more loads per employee, coordinating dispatch more consistently, or making better transportation decisions across a complex network.
This guide compares three platforms with different operating strengths: Turvo, McLeod Software, and Infios Transportation Management. We explain who each suits and how to evaluate its fit against the results your business needs.
1. Turvo: Best for Brokers and 3PLs Reducing Manual Work Across Freight Operations
Turvo helps freight brokers and 3PLs improve efficiency by reducing the administrative work surrounding each shipment. Its transportation management system brings planning, execution, customer communication, and settlement into a connected workflow, giving employees fewer reasons to re-enter information or chase another team for an update.
The opportunity becomes clear when shipment volume increases. A process that requires someone to copy order details, relay carrier updates, and forward delivery documents becomes harder to sustain across a growing customer base. Turvo keeps shipment information available as responsibilities move between employees and external partners.
Key Capabilities and Benefits
1. Reduce the Administrative Effort Behind Each Shipment
Turvo helps teams carry shipment information through daily operations without repeatedly collecting and explaining the same details.
An operator may already know why a delivery changed, but customer service still needs the explanation and finance may later need the supporting documents. When that information stays with individual employees, every handoff creates additional work.
Turvo’s shipment execution tools bring tracking, document sharing, and contextual communication into the shipment workflow. Employees can review the available record as they take responsibility for the next task.
That continuity can reduce the internal messages, forwarded attachments, and repeated status checks needed to keep freight moving through the business.
For a growing brokerage or 3PL, the benefit is greater capacity from the team already in place. Employees can spend more time covering freight and resolving service issues as routine coordination becomes less demanding.
2. Cut the Back-and-Forth Around Customer Updates
Turvo Collaboration Cloud gives customers and carriers access to relevant shipment information, reducing the need for employees to relay every routine update.
A customer asking about delivery progress can interrupt an account manager, who then interrupts operations to confirm the answer. Repeated across a full shipment book, those small exchanges consume considerable attention.
Turvo supports shareable shipment links, contextual messaging, notifications, and document sharing. Participants can follow the information made available to them and communicate within the context of the shipment.
Account managers still handle questions that require explanation or judgment, but they have a shared reference when doing so.
This helps logistics providers maintain responsive customer service as their account base expands. Customers gain more direct access to updates, and employees have fewer routine requests competing with work that needs their attention.
3. Reduce Duplicate Entry Between Transportation Systems
The Turvo Integration Hub helps information move between the TMS and the other applications supporting the operation.
A brokerage may use separate tools for carrier monitoring, load boards, shipment tracking, and accounting. Those tools can each serve a useful purpose while still creating extra work if employees must manually copy information between them.
Turvo offers pre-built integrations, public APIs, webhooks, and data-import tools. Supported integration categories include warehouse systems, ERP and accounting, telematics, tracking providers, load boards, and carrier monitoring.
For example, an order-system connection can supply information for shipment planning, while an accounting connection can support downstream financial processing.
The efficiency gain comes from reducing the manual transfers between those applications. Businesses can retain specialist tools while building a more connected process around the freight they manage.
4. Spend Less Time Checking Routine Loads and More Time Resolving Exceptions
Turvo combines shipment visibility with alerts and operational context, helping teams identify movements that require attention.
When employees check every load through separate tracking screens, calls, and messages, monitoring becomes a substantial task of its own. A developing service problem also takes longer to investigate if the surrounding information is scattered.
Turvo’s visibility capabilities bring inbound and outbound shipment status together with order, facility, and communication information. Location updates from the Driver App and connected telematics can support that operating view.
If a truck is delayed, the operator can review the shipment’s context before contacting the carrier, coordinating an appointment change, or updating the customer.
This helps teams direct their effort toward freight that needs intervention and reduces the background information gathering required before they can act.
5. Use Performance Data to Choose Where to Improve
Turvo Analytics helps managers examine whether changes to daily operations are supporting service and profitability.
A busy team can identify plenty of frustrations, but deciding which problem to address first requires evidence. Recurring carrier issues, weak lane margins, and customer service trends may each point to a different improvement.
Turvo provides customizable dashboards, reports, and scorecards covering operational and financial performance. Teams can review customers, carriers, and lanes, examine trends, and prepare evidence for business reviews.
An operations leader can investigate repeated service failures, while an account manager reviews the performance of a customer’s freight. Leadership can assess whether increasing volume is contributing to a healthier business.
These views give improvement efforts a clearer direction. Managers can focus on specific operating or commercial problems and use subsequent reporting to review progress.
6. Simplify Appointment Booking and Schedule Changes
Turvo Appointment Scheduling reduces the coordination involved in arranging pickups and deliveries.
Without shared scheduling information, a booking change can trigger several exchanges between the carrier, facility, and transportation team. Each participant needs to confirm the new plan, and someone must make sure the shipment record reflects it.
Turvo connects appointment slots with order, shipment, customer, and carrier details. Self-service booking allows partners to participate directly, while truck-status and arrival and departure updates provide additional context for managing facility activity.
Teams can review a delayed shipment alongside its appointment and coordinate an adjustment using the same information.
For brokers and 3PLs managing frequent facility interactions, this can reduce time spent checking availability, confirming bookings, and repeating changes to different contacts.
7. Make Order Planning and Carrier Offers More Repeatable
Turvo’s order-to-shipment planning gives employees a structured way to turn customer demand into freight ready for execution.
Planners can organize one or multiple orders into shipments with the relevant routes, dimensions, capacity requirements, cost allocations, and margins. Connections to order-management systems can bring order information into Turvo and reduce repeated entry.
Routing guides support the next stage by applying rules for offering shipments to carriers, carrier groups, and bid boards. Configurable roles help organize responsibilities across operations, carrier sales, customer service, tracking, and finance.
This gives the business a more consistent process for routine freight, with less dependence on each employee’s own sequence of manual steps.
As the team grows, established workflows can help new employees understand how work should progress while experienced operators concentrate on loads with unusual requirements.
8. Reduce Paperwork Delays After Delivery
The Turvo Driver App helps drivers capture and share the documents needed to complete the shipment’s administrative work.
A delivered load can still generate several follow-ups if its proof of delivery is missing. Finance contacts operations, operations contacts the carrier, and the carrier asks the driver to send the document again.
Turvo supports document uploads, shipment updates, and contextual communication from the road. Documents such as bills of lading and digital proof of delivery can remain associated with the shipment for the relevant teams to access.
Combined with settlement workflows and accounting integrations, this helps preserve the information needed as the load moves into financial processing.
The benefit is fewer repeated document requests and less manual matching of attachments to shipments. Operations and finance can work from a more complete record when preparing delivered freight for billing and payment.
Turvo Pricing
Turvo offers transparent pricing, with its TMS plan starting at $5,000 per month and Enterprise pricing available upon request. Both plans include onboarding, training, data migration, and support resources.
Where Turvo Shines
- Less repeated work between departments: Shared shipment information helps operations, customer service, and finance continue the work without repeatedly requesting the same background details.
- Collaboration that reduces routine coordination: Customer and carrier participation can reduce the calls and emails needed to keep everyone informed. Communication remains connected to the shipment being managed.
- A connected technology stack: Integrations let specialist applications contribute to the transportation workflow. Employees can spend less time transferring information between otherwise useful tools.
- Usability in everyday freight work: Search, filters, shared documents, and shipment context help employees locate the information needed for their next task. This supports more consistent execution as teams grow.
- Support for changing established processes: Migration assistance, onboarding, training, hypercare, and ongoing resources help businesses make the platform part of daily operations. Efficiency improvements depend on employees adopting the workflows as well as having the software.
Turvo Customer Reviews
Kareena B., Logistics Coordinator, said, “Turvo is an excellent time-saving tool, uniquely capable of quickly generating documents like BOLs and carrier rate confirmations. And it has its own tracking app. Tracking is the best feature I have ever seen. It allows users to monitor shipments in real time on a map, showing the exact location of drivers.”
Charlie B., Operations Manager, Denver, said, “Using Turvo has been easy and efficient, making my job a lot easier. I like the fact that it consolidates things. I can communicate within my organization and with customers all in one place and not have to use different platforms.”
Ryan Pamplin, Director of Innovation at Taimen Transport LLC, said, “Turvo is truly flexible enough to leverage the full power of the platform anywhere and from any device, which allows our team to work remotely from home, on the road with their customers, or around the office in our various flex spaces. Managing transportation in your supply chain across thousands of emails, bulky portals, and disparate channels is inefficient. Trading partners, internal team members, and external service providers being reliant on a single computer at a stationary desk is the past. Real-time collaboration inside each individual shipment, with shareable links for tracking and web- or app-based access, is Turvo. It’s the future of freight, here today. Our employees service their customers with optimal efficiency every day of the year, and it wouldn’t be possible without Turvo.”
Robert Goldstein, CEO, Genpro, said, “We’re not just moving a load with a truck from point A to point B. We’re able to find new efficiencies and work with clients more strategically.”
Who Turvo Is Best For
- Growing brokerages whose administrative work is increasing with every load: Teams can connect shipment activity, communication, and documents to reduce the repetitive coordination surrounding higher freight volumes.
- 3PLs managing frequent handoffs between customers, carriers, and facilities: Providers can bring partner participation and appointment information closer to transportation execution.
- Established businesses replacing a cumbersome freight broker TMS: Organizations held back by duplicate entry, disconnected integrations, or difficult information retrieval can evaluate Turvo against those specific sources of inefficiency.
- Lean teams balancing customer service with daily operations: Shared supply chain visibility can reduce routine status requests while giving employees better context for questions that require a response.
- New brokerages and agent spinouts with the budget for a full TMS: Businesses establishing their own operation can introduce structured planning, execution, and settlement workflows before manual workarounds become entrenched.
See where your team could remove repeated work from its shipment process. Bring a typical load, from order entry through delivery and settlement, to a Turvo demo and assess the handoffs, updates, and document requests involved. Book a demo now.
2. McLeod Software: Best for Integrated Carrier and Brokerage Operations
McLeod Software provides transportation management solutions for trucking companies, freight brokers, 3PLs, and private fleets. Its two core TMS products serve different operational needs: LoadMaster focuses on asset-based carriers, while PowerBroker supports freight brokerage operations. Organizations managing both carrier and brokerage businesses can use these platforms separately or together to coordinate transportation activities.
McLeod brings dispatching, load planning, carrier management, shipment tracking, accounting, and workflow automation into connected systems. This makes it particularly relevant to transportation businesses looking to reduce manual processes, improve resource utilization, and maintain better visibility across their freight operations.
Key Capabilities and Benefits
- Load planning and dispatch: LoadMaster provides real-time planning tools for assigning loads, managing drivers and equipment, monitoring dispatch activity, and responding to transportation delays.
- Carrier matching and brokerage automation: PowerBroker’s TopMatch helps brokers identify suitable carriers based on historical activity and preferences, while automated load offers and tendering workflows reduce repetitive coordination.
- Shipment visibility and exception management: GPS integrations, predictive ETA calculations, route alerts, and centralized tracking help teams identify potential delays and communicate shipment updates.
- Integrated accounting and financial management: LoadMaster and PowerBroker include transportation-specific accounting capabilities covering general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing, and expense management.
- EDI and third-party integrations: Native EDI, API connectivity, and integrations with telematics, freight visibility, load boards, and other transportation technologies support information sharing across supply chain partners.
Pricing
McLeod does not publicly disclose standard pricing for LoadMaster or PowerBroker. Custom quotes are available based on the selected products, operational requirements, and deployment preferences.
Where McLeod Software Shines
- Connected carrier and brokerage operations: Businesses operating their own fleets alongside freight brokerage services can use LoadMaster and PowerBroker together, reducing disconnected workflows between asset-based and outsourced transportation.
- Dispatch and resource efficiency: Load planning, automated carrier matching, driver assignments, and shipment alerts help transportation teams reduce manual coordination and respond faster to operational changes.
- Integrated back-office management: Transportation activity connects with accounting, billing, settlements, and financial reporting, helping teams manage freight execution and related financial processes within the same environment.
- Established integration ecosystem: McLeod supports a broad network of certified technology partners and multiple deployment options, allowing businesses to connect existing transportation tools and infrastructure.
Where McLeod Software Falls Short
- Shipper-focused planning: McLeod primarily serves carriers, brokerages, and logistics providers. Manufacturers or retailers seeking broad multimodal transportation optimization across global supply chains may find a shipper-oriented TMS more suitable.
- Implementation and usability: Its extensive operational features, integrations, and deployment options can create additional configuration and training requirements. Some LoadMaster users also report that parts of the interface feel dated.
Customer Reviews
Bryan A., a Team Leader, said, “it simplifies shipment management and provides excellent track-and-trace visibility.”
A verified LoadMaster user wrote, “The UI is a little outdated looking, but I personally like this.”
Who McLeod Software Is Best For
- Asset-based carriers: Trucking businesses seeking centralized load planning, driver management, dispatch automation, and equipment visibility.
- Freight brokerages and 3PLs: Organizations managing carrier relationships, freight tendering, load tracking, and transportation-specific accounting.
- Hybrid transportation businesses: Companies operating both asset-based fleets and brokerage services that want more connected transportation workflows.
- Integration-heavy operations: Transportation providers relying on telematics, visibility platforms, EDI connections, financial systems, and other specialized logistics technologies.
3. Infios Transportation Management (Formerly MercuryGate): Best for Complex Global and Multimodal Supply Chains
Infios Transportation Management (TM), formerly MercuryGate TMS, is an enterprise transportation management platform designed for organizations coordinating complex freight networks. MercuryGate joined Körber Supply Chain Software in 2024, and the combined business rebranded as Infios in March 2025.
Infios TM supports transportation planning, optimization, execution, visibility, and analytics across domestic and international operations. Its combination of multimodal transportation management, automated workflows, AI-assisted decision-making, and integration with broader supply chain systems makes it particularly relevant to enterprises seeking efficiency across complex logistics networks.
Key Capabilities and Benefits
- Multimodal planning and optimization: Supports transportation planning across modes, regions, currencies, and carrier networks, using advanced rating, routing, and optimization capabilities to improve freight decisions.
- AI-assisted transportation management: Uses predictive, generative, conversational, and agentic AI capabilities to identify transportation risks, process shipment documents, support order creation, and manage operational exceptions.
- Automated freight execution: Streamlines carrier onboarding, load tendering, shipment status updates, and transportation workflows to reduce manual coordination between logistics teams and carriers.
- End-to-end shipment visibility: Provides transportation status information and exception management capabilities to help teams monitor freight movements, respond to disruptions, and improve delivery reliability.
- Transportation analytics and cost management: Uses operational data, performance metrics, and transportation insights to support freight cost analysis, carrier performance evaluation, and more informed decisions. Additional Infios freight audit and payment capabilities can extend financial oversight.
Pricing
Infios does not publicly disclose standard pricing for its Transportation Management platform. Custom quotes depend on the transportation network, selected capabilities, and integration requirements.
Where Infios Transportation Management Shines
- Global multimodal transportation: Supports complex transportation networks spanning multiple freight modes, geographies, currencies, and carrier relationships, making it suitable for organizations managing international supply chains.
- Enterprise-level optimization: Advanced rating, load consolidation, routing, and optimization capabilities help larger organizations manage transportation costs, capacity utilization, and service performance.
- Connected supply chain execution: Infios TM is part of a broader supply chain technology portfolio covering order management, warehousing, fulfillment, and transportation, supporting greater coordination between operational systems.
- Scalable automation and AI: Its modular architecture allows organizations to expand functionality as requirements grow, while AI-assisted workflows can help reduce manual intervention and accelerate responses to transportation disruptions.
Where Infios Transportation Management Falls Short
- Small-business suitability: Smaller organizations managing straightforward shipping operations may not require the breadth of an enterprise-grade multimodal transportation platform.
- Implementation complexity: Deployments involving multiple transportation modes, regions, business units, and enterprise integrations can require substantial configuration and implementation planning.
- Usability and support considerations: Customer feedback identifies challenges involving reporting interfaces, system performance, and support responsiveness, although experiences vary by organization and implementation.
Customer Reviews
Robert K. wrote, “It’s a great way to communicate with customers about shipments.”
A Procurement Manager at a transportation company wrote, “Very pleased with the support pre/during/post implementation.”
Who Infios Transportation Management Is Best For
- Global shippers: Manufacturers, retailers, and distributors managing complex domestic and international transportation networks.
- Large 3PLs: Logistics providers coordinating freight across multiple customers, transportation modes, carriers, and geographic regions.
- Multimodal transportation operations: Organizations managing combinations of truckload, LTL, parcel, ocean, air, rail, and other freight movements.
- Enterprise supply chain teams: Businesses seeking to connect transportation planning and execution with broader order management, warehousing, analytics, and automation capabilities.
How We Ranked the Best TMS for Supply Chain Efficiency
We evaluated each platform based on how effectively it can reduce unnecessary work while improving the consistency of transportation operations.
- Workflow efficiency: Ability to reduce repetitive steps across planning, execution, tracking, documents, and settlement.
- Freight process automation: Support for carrier tendering, routing, alerts, status updates, document handling, and other repeatable tasks.
- Integration: Connectivity with ERP, WMS, accounting, tracking, telematics, load boards, and other logistics systems.
- Planning and optimization: Tools for improving routing, carrier selection, load consolidation, capacity use, and transportation decisions.
- Visibility and exception management: Ability to identify freight that needs attention without manually checking every shipment.
- Collaboration: Support for more efficient communication between internal teams, customers, carriers, and other partners.
- Scalability: Ability to maintain efficient processes as shipment volume, customers, users, modes, and operational complexity increase.
How to Choose a Transport Management Software (TMS) to Improve Supply Chain Efficiency
A TMS improves supply chain efficiency when it removes unnecessary work from the transportation process rather than simply digitizing the same manual steps. The right platform should address the specific places where your team loses time, repeats information, waits for updates, or relies too heavily on individual employees to keep freight moving.
1. Identify Where Manual Work Accumulates
Start by mapping a typical shipment from order entry through delivery and settlement.
Look for repeated data entry, status checks, forwarded documents, carrier follow-ups, appointment coordination, customer updates, and information requests between departments.
Do not treat every manual step as equally important. Focus first on activities that happen frequently or become significantly harder as shipment volume grows.
A TMS should help reduce those routine touches while preserving human attention for carrier decisions, customer issues, and exceptions that actually require judgment.
2. Check How Much Routine Transportation Work Can Be Standardized
Efficiency depends partly on how consistently routine freight can move through the operation.
Evaluate whether the platform can apply repeatable rules to activities such as order-to-shipment planning, carrier offers, routing, tendering, status notifications, document collection, and settlement preparation.
Then determine where employees still need to make decisions.
The goal is not to automate every transportation activity. It is to establish a predictable process for routine freight so employees spend less time recreating the same steps load by load.
3. Evaluate How Well Information Moves Between Systems
Disconnected software can make an otherwise efficient workflow unnecessarily manual.
Identify which systems hold the information your transportation team relies on, including ERP, WMS, accounting, telematics, tracking providers, load boards, and carrier-management tools.
Then check whether the TMS can exchange the required information without employees copying it manually between applications.
For businesses using several specialist systems, integration flexibility can preserve the tools that already work while reducing the administrative effort required to keep them connected.
4. Measure How the Platform Handles Exceptions
Efficiency does not mean every shipment moves perfectly. It means routine freight requires less attention while emerging problems are easier to identify and resolve.
During demonstrations, test a delayed shipment, missed appointment, missing document, or carrier issue.
Look at how quickly employees can identify the problem, access the surrounding information, contact the relevant participant, and decide what happens next.
A useful TMS should reduce the time spent discovering and reconstructing an exception so operators can focus on resolving it.
5. Make Sure Efficiency Gains Can Be Measured
A new TMS should give managers evidence that operational changes are producing better results.
Look for reporting around carrier performance, lanes, customers, transportation costs, service levels, exceptions, and financial outcomes.
Then establish the metrics you want to improve before implementation. That could include fewer manual status checks, faster document collection, reduced duplicate entry, better carrier performance, or more shipments handled per employee.
The most useful reporting should help teams identify where inefficiency remains and decide what process to improve next.
Make Every Shipment Require Less Administrative Work With Turvo
Transportation efficiency improves when your team spends less time copying information, chasing updates, forwarding documents, and rebuilding shipment context.
Turvo connects planning, execution, customer and carrier collaboration, integrations, visibility, documents, and settlement so brokers and 3PLs can reduce repetitive coordination around each load.
Book a Turvo demo to walk through a typical shipment and identify where your current process could require fewer manual touches.
FAQs
1. How Can a TMS Improve Supply Chain Efficiency?
A TMS can reduce manual work across planning, carrier coordination, tracking, customer updates, document handling, and settlement while creating more consistent transportation workflows.
2. What TMS Features Improve Operational Efficiency?
Useful features include workflow automation, shipment planning, carrier management, exception alerts, integrations, document management, appointment scheduling, analytics, and connected financial workflows.
3. How Does TMS Automation Reduce Manual Work?
TMS automation can standardize repetitive activities such as carrier offers, tendering, alerts, status updates, routing, document handling, and workflow triggers, reducing unnecessary employee intervention.
4. How Do TMS Integrations Improve Supply Chain Efficiency?
Integrations help information move between transportation, warehouse, accounting, tracking, telematics, and other systems without employees repeatedly entering or transferring the same data.
5. How Should Businesses Measure TMS Efficiency?
Track metrics such as manual touches per shipment, status-check volume, document turnaround, exception resolution, carrier performance, shipment volume per employee, transportation costs, and service levels.
