Our shippers needed to find methods to improve their processes in order to reduce logistics costs to offset the downturn in the economy. Clients were looking for solutions, and by pairing our customized support approach with MercuryGate's leading transportation management software, Trinity created opportunities for operational savings between 10-30 percent of overhead expenses. "

— Amy Proctor, Director of Logistics Sales, Trinity Transport, Inc.

See our growing list of 3PL customers and review case studies.

3PL Solutions Primary Functions

With the MercuryGate enterprise TMS, third-party logistics companies benefit from these primary functions:

Sell, implement and board new clients rapidly
The MercuryGate TMS is easily configured to fit your business processes. The workflow engine within the application adjusts so you can continue to use proven best practices for your enterprise. By integrating the enterprise TMS with your other core applications, data flows in accordance to the workflow and guidelines you've established for your company.
Procure rates from carriers and respond to bids from customers
Ensure that you are selecting the optimal carrier, regardless of mode, based on rate, service, and/or route guide specifications. Identify carriers by comparing similar loads in the past, by carrier service area or preferred lanes and capacity. Post loads on public bid boards electronically and remove them once the load is covered. Tender loads to selected carriers manually one at a time or automatically, it's your choice. If you have small package freight you can use the parcel native TMS to plan and execute those shipments along with your other modes. Click here to learn how.

Manage your inbound freight by posting Purchase Orders on your vendor portals to determine inbound carrier compliance. Optimize across multiple vendors into multiple facilities to minimize transportation spend. Managing inbound freight allows for greater visibility of inbound SKUs and can provide opportunity to maximize equipment utilization and reduce costs.
Manage carriers & rates
Quickly load all carrier information in one place. You can maintain contact & insurance information, manage contracts and define service areas. It's easy to procure bids and convert winning bids from carriers to contracts and to set up reusable templates. You'll be surprised at how quickly you can be operational and realizing cost savings.
Optimize loads with Mojo
Find the most cost effective way to move your freight – across all modes, inbound and outbound, international and domestic. Mojo will identify every possible opportunity to consolidate shipments that will minimize miles, costs and CO2 emissions. It then sends loads to the TMS for rating and tendering. MercuryGate TMS minimizes you costs while reducing our carbon footprint. For more information about Mojo: Click here to read more about transportation optimization.
Broker shipments
MercuryGate TMS is easily configured to fit your business processes. The workflow engine within the application adjusts to your SOP so you can continue to use proven practices for your enterprise. By integrating the enterprise TMS with your other core applications, data flows in accordance to the workflow and guidelines you've established for your company.
Move freight
MercuryGate TMS will determine the most cost-effective way to execute every shipment. For every leg, it considers every mode; including parcel, LTL, truckload, air, ocean, intermodal, and rail. Plan loads with a clear view of all shipments from all customers. Then, optimize the loads by taking advantage of consolidation opportunities across all customers.
Manage international shipments
MercuryGate enterprise TMS is a global, multi-modal TMS accessed more than 120,000 times daily by users in over 50 countries. From multi-currency and multi-unit of measure to virtually unlimited language support, MercuryGate's unique capabilities can be deployed anywhere in the world to manage multimodal, multi-leg, cross ocean, cross-border movements from any origin to any destination.
Control Tower Visibility
MercuryGate Control Tower Visibility gives top down and bottom up door-to-door shipment visibility of multi-modal, multi-leg shipments from point of origin to destination for all trading partners. The Control Tower captures operational data from all parties and centralizes management capability while continuously monitoring the status of all the events providing the information necessary to react quickly to in transit events.

Shipments can be tracked by any known reference value, down to the item level, so you don't have to maintain a complex cross-reference table for your users. Status information is used to create reports on in-process shipments and carrier performance. You can also elect to view real-time exception reports so you'll always have your finger on the pulse of your shipments. Click here to learn more.
Settle loads and allocate costs
Whether you execute domestic ground freight or complex multi-leg loads, settle costs and compute total landed cost with ease. When a carrier issues a freight invoice, MercuryGate TMS matches it against the rated shipment definition. If there's a match, it can be automatically sent to your accounts payable system for payment. If the invoice amount falls outside of your pre-defined tolerance level, differences are highlighted so you can collaborate with the carrier to adjust as necessary. Transportation costs can be allocated to cost centers at the individual line item level and shared costs can be allocated based on a method of your choosing (# of items, mileage, weight, etc.)
Invoice customer
MercuryGate TMS enables a service provider to invoice for multiple shipments as if it werea single load. The load may include shipments from multiple customers. Because the TMS tracks the buy and sell rates for each shipment in a consolidated load you can measure the profitability of each shipment or the entire load.
Provide transportation intelligence
With a single end-to-end global transportation management system in place, you can create operational reporting such as day-to-day shipment management, exception reports and audit reports. You'll be able to leverage operational, tactical and strategic information in real time – night or day. You can elect to have reports automatically sent to you or you can click to view current data at any time.

With summary reports, you can drill into categories of key interest to explore the details. Downloading any report to a spreadsheet for further analysis is a simple one-click process. The options for reporting are as varied as your imagination, but easily implemented.

All of these functions are supported by a robust, configurable workflow management tool. This enables our shipper clients to set up and control complex shipment processes as well as implement recognized best practices across the organization. Click here to learn more.