FourKites and Cargonerds Add Real-Time Tracking to Digital Freight Platform

FourKites and Cargonerds have partnered to help freight forwarders and shippers track global shipments in real time.

The new collaboration adds FourKites’ real-time supply chain visibility capabilities to Cargonerds’ digital freight platform for quoting, booking, tracking and reporting, the companies said in a Monday (Jan. 30) press release.

“[FourKites’] end-to-end solution enables us to give our customers the most accurate ETAs (estimated time of arrivals) and greater network collaboration,” Cargonerds Founder Conrad Franchi said in the release. “Having the right data at the right time to identify precisely what can be done is the only path to proactively mitigating issues while reducing costs and fees.”

Supply chain stakeholders are increasingly adopting digital solutions in all aspects of the process.

On Wednesday (Jan. 25), global freight booking and payment platform Freightos said it had closed its previously announced business combination with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Gesher I Acquisition Corp. and raised more than $80 million to further scale its business, increase transaction growth and further develop its technology stack.

In August 2022, Vector.ai, which has since rebranded as Raft, added payment integrations to its productivity platform for freight forwarders, enabling forwarders to further automate their operations, free up their human workforce and pay the creditors much faster to reduce goods clearing times.

During that same month, freight software provider Expedock raised $13.5 million in Series A to expand its team and help supply chain businesses better understand and operationalize their data.

The company said at the time that supply chain bottlenecks and the move to remote work have increased the need to automate the handling of paperwork that is now done manually.

With the new partnership, the Cargonerds platform will track shipments across road, rail, ocean, air, parcel and last mile, and FourKites’ machine learning-driven ETAs will let stakeholders know when they will arrive, according to the press release.

The small and medium-sized freight forwarders using the Cargonerds platform can send data about each shipment in transit to stakeholders, streamlining communication and facilitating collaboration, the release said.

“FourKites’ digitized solution will eliminate manual tracking from Cargonerds’ network of freight forwarders and customers, saving significant time and resources and enabling them to shift focus to higher-value tasks,” FourKites Senior Vice President of Sales, Network and Operations EMEA Marc Boileau said in the release.