Logistics software development, built around how your office already runs

What does logistics software development cover?

A logistics office already runs on bought tools: a transportation management system (TMS) for loads, load boards for finding trucks or freight, EDI or API feeds from larger shippers, and an accounting package. The hours go into the gaps between them. Orders arrive by email and someone types them into the TMS. Carrier insurance certificates sit in a folder. A broker’s transaction records are pieced together by hand, and shipper bills are matched to carrier pay in a spreadsheet at month end.

Custom software closes those gaps and connects to the tools you keep. The four systems listed on this page are what we would build for a broker, a 3PL or a carrier, and one of them, email-to-order intake, is a kind we already build and run. Our Custom Software page covers how we work on any build. The rules that shape a logistics company’s website and marketing are on our logistics industry page, and carriers will find more on our page for trucking companies.

What records does a freight broker’s software have to keep?

Federal rules spell out a broker’s records. Under 49 CFR 371.3, a broker keeps a record of each transaction, and the record shows:

• The consignor: its name and address.
• The originating carrier: its name, address and registration number.
• The paperwork: the bill of lading or freight bill number.
• The broker’s pay: what it received for the brokerage service, and who paid it.
• Any other service: a description of each non-brokerage service performed for the shipment, what it earned and who paid.
• The freight charges: any the broker collected, and the date it paid the carrier.

A broker may keep master lists of consignors and of carriers’ addresses and registration numbers instead of repeating them on every record. The records are kept for three years, and each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of it. A broker that runs another business as well keeps the revenue and expenses of its brokerage apart from the rest, splits shared expenses on an equitable basis and must be prepared to explain how (49 CFR 371.13).

In software, those rules are a data design. Each load carries the fields its record needs from the moment it is booked, the master lists live in one place, nothing is deleted before the three years are up, and a single transaction’s record can be pulled up whole when a shipper or carrier asks to see it. Revenue is tagged as brokerage or not as it is entered, so the split is ready when someone asks how it was made. We build to the rule as written and leave its legal reading to your counsel: we are not lawyers.

Should you build custom TMS software or buy a TMS?

Usually, buy the TMS and build around it. A TMS you buy already plans, books and tracks loads, and its maker keeps it current. Custom logistics software earns its place where your company works differently from the product’s assumptions: the accounts you serve, the formats they send, the checks you run before a load moves, the way you bill.

Custom TMS software, meaning a TMS built for your company alone, is the rarer call. It can make sense when your mix of work is one the products you have tried handle badly, such as brokerage alongside your own trucks, or when the TMS you run can’t be changed and its gaps cost more each year than a build would. Before deciding, price the gap: count the hours your team spends each week on workarounds, and what a slip in those steps costs. Our guide to building or buying software sets out how to weigh the two, and the custom software cost page shows where builds sit across the market.

Where does custom software pay off in a logistics office?

Wherever the same information is typed twice. An order arrives by email and is keyed into the TMS. A carrier’s insurance certificate arrives as a PDF and its dates are copied into a spreadsheet. A proof of delivery comes back and someone matches it to an invoice before the bill goes out. Each of those steps can be read, checked and filed by software, with a person stepping in when something doesn’t fit.

To pick the first one, weigh three things:

• Volume: how many times a day the step happens.
• Time: how long each one takes a person, start to finish.
• Errors: what a slip costs when it gets through, from a missed pickup to a bill that doesn’t match the load.

The step where those add up to the most hours and cost usually goes first. Our guide to what to automate first walks through the sums. The aim is to move your team’s time off retyping and onto the work that needs judgment: pricing a lane, choosing a carrier, handling the exception.

What should a carrier file tracker check?

A broker or 3PL that tenders loads to outside carriers checks each one first, and the checks come round again with every new carrier and every renewal. FMCSA requires all for-hire carriers to obtain operating authority and maintain proof of insurance. Its SAFER Company Snapshot gives a carrier’s identification, size, commodity information and safety record, including any safety rating, a summary of roadside out-of-service inspections and crash information, looked up one carrier at a time by USDOT number, MC number or company name.

A carrier file tracker keeps one record per carrier and puts those checks where the team can see them:

• Authority and identity: the USDOT and MC numbers, the legal name and the date your team last checked them.
• Insurance: each certificate on file, with its expiry date and a flag before it lapses.
• Safety record: what your team found on the snapshot, and the date it was looked up.
• Paperwork: the signed carrier agreement and anything else your setup packet asks for.

The tracker flags a missing or expiring document before a load is tendered, and the carrier’s registration number flows from it into the transaction record a broker keeps. Your carrier team still decides who hauls; the tracker makes sure nobody decides without the file in front of them.

What does email-to-order intake look like in practice?

An intake reads each order email and its attachments, works out which account sent it, and builds the order in the TMS when everything it needs is there. The one we run works in four steps:

• It finds the account: from the sender, the reply-to address and the signature.
• It applies that account’s rules: its address book, its service levels and the formats it prints.
• It checks before it builds: the address, and whether the job is already in the dispatch system.
• It creates the order: priced, through the dispatch system’s API, then posted to the dispatch team’s chat, with a daily summary of everything built.

AlvyOne is the operations system we built and run with Alvy Logistics, and its intake handles the order emails that reach Alvy and DSI Transportation, which shares the order system. Alvy is owned by our co-founder Noah Alvarez, and DSI is an Alvy company. From June 30 to November 1, 2026, the intake built 13,554 jobs from email while sorting about 198,300 emails. From October 3 to November 2, 2026, the median time from email to order was 38 seconds across 2,919 orders, with 84% built within a minute, and 91.4% of new-job emails became orders with no person stepping in; the other 8.6% were held for a dispatcher. The AlvyOne case study covers the rest, from how replies are filed to what changed and when.

How does custom software connect to your TMS, EDI feeds and accounting?

Through each product’s API where it has one. Many TMS and accounting products publish an API, and a connection through it is the steadiest way to read and write loads, rates and invoices. Where a product has none, or its API doesn’t reach the data the job needs, the fallback is a scheduled file export and import, or an EDI exchange set up with the trading partner.

The plan lists every connection before the build starts: what it reads and writes, which way the data moves, how often it runs, and what happens when the other side is down. A connection that fails alerts a dispatcher instead of failing silently. Our page on API integrations covers this work in more depth.

Where does AI fit, and where do people stay?

AI is good at reading text written for people: an order typed into an email, a rate confirmation sent as a PDF, a note from a driver. It is the wrong tool for the decisions that carry the risk, so pricing exceptions, carrier choices and driver assignments stay with your team.

The intake described above shows the split. When an order is missing a detail or reads two ways, it holds the job instead of guessing, and a card in the team’s chat says what is missing, with a reminder every hour until a dispatcher answers or builds the job by hand. The intake stops at the order, and dispatch assigns the driver. A separate dispatch assistant in the same chat finds jobs, answers status questions, and edits, cancels or assigns a driver when a dispatcher asks, checking with them before any risky change.

Across the industry, use is still early. In the Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey collected October 5 to 18, 2026, 13.5% of transportation and warehousing businesses said they had used AI in the previous two weeks (the survey’s own term is now Super Intelligence, or SI, formerly AI). One step at a time, with a person checking the output, is the sensible way in.

How do we run it after launch?

We keep running what we build, and the intake shows what that takes:

• Health reports: the intake reports in every 15 minutes, and a late report is flagged.
• Daily model checks: the AI models it uses, and the provider’s status, are checked each day.
• A fallback for each failure: a failed read is retried; when the retries run out, dispatch is told to build the job by hand, and a second model steps in if the main one fails.
• Spend guards: an alert when AI costs climb, and a self-pause only when one sender floods an inbox.
• Two off switches: one stops orders posting, the other stops the inboxes being read.
• Sign-in and access: two-step sign-in, and each person sees only what their role allows.

New order formats and account rules still arrive every week, and the intake changes with them. That is why the work doesn’t stop at launch, and your proposal sets the scope of the monthly plan that covers it.

How does it start?

Every engagement starts with a 15-minute call, where you tell us which step costs your office the most hours. If custom software is the answer, a written proposal follows with the system, its cost and how we would run it, and nothing starts until you approve it. If a tool you can buy would do the job, we say so. Before the call, our guide to AI and automation in logistics is a useful read. Book a 15-minute call.