I have to ask ... Is there any real value in LoadLink?

[freightfwd]

In conversation with William this is not an error. All accounts are being increased as they need the revenue to keep up with technology.

Holy moly! $3500??? For what? What else are you getting in your 'package' to justify an increase of $1500 bucks?

 

[MLCAR]

Truth is state side there is competition, that forces the Load boards to keep their pricing low to keep their userbase and market share. From DAT to Truck Stop to Sylectus and every large carrier having thier own board and ELD companies now providing load boards. Compare that with Loadlink being pretty much the dominant board here in Canada and you see why they can charge what they do. This won't stop either they have been pretty aggressive with their price increases in just the last few years, when they saw the influx of new CVOR's and MC's.

Alternatives to LL do exist like EvoTrux but they are not where they need to be to take on LL. And if you really think about it, we are to blame. We have used LL so much to the point its a household name, they don't need to market their product or more importantly innovate. It has been the same 2 way posting board for decades with a shinny new paintjob (which is still the same since 2011).

We are fortunate now to have about 90% of business to come from repeat clients (Brokers and direct shippers) that we can downgrade to their lowest package and use it only as "backfill freight" finders if ever needed. The goal is to eventually build more relationships and eventually cancel our subscription.

 

[tasuinam]

Truth is state side there is competition, that forces the Load boards to keep their pricing low to keep their userbase and market share. From DAT to Truck Stop to Sylectus and every large carrier having thier own board and ELD companies now providing load boards. Compare that with Loadlink being pretty much the dominant board here in Canada and you see why they can charge what they do. This won't stop either they have been pretty aggressive with their price increases in just the last few years, when they saw the influx of new CVOR's and MC's.

Alternatives to LL do exist like EvoTrux but they are not where they need to be to take on LL. And if you really think about it, we are to blame. We have used LL so much to the point its a household name, they don't need to market their product or more importantly innovate. It has been the same 2 way posting board for decades with a shinny new paintjob (which is still the same since 2011).

We are fortunate now to have about 90% of business to come from repeat clients (Brokers and direct shippers) that we can downgrade to their lowest package and use it only as "backfill freight" finders if ever needed. The goal is to eventually build more relationships and eventually cancel our subscription.

That was our goal as well - and we were there to a point that we did't use LL for almost two months at all. However for the past two months - a lot of our repeate and direct clients have been renegotiating and when we cannot go below a certain amount they go to LL and find that their freight gets moved ...
Imagine someone offering MB to PQ for CAD1300 ... makes no sense at all

 

[LrgCar]

Truth is state side there is competition, that forces the Load boards to keep their pricing low to keep their userbase and market share. From DAT to Truck Stop to Sylectus and every large carrier having thier own board and ELD companies now providing load boards. Compare that with Loadlink being pretty much the dominant board here in Canada and you see why they can charge what they do. This won't stop either they have been pretty aggressive with their price increases in just the last few years, when they saw the influx of new CVOR's and MC's.

Alternatives to LL do exist like EvoTrux but they are not where they need to be to take on LL. And if you really think about it, we are to blame. We have used LL so much to the point its a household name, they don't need to market their product or more importantly innovate. It has been the same 2 way posting board for decades with a shinny new paintjob (which is still the same since 2011).

We are fortunate now to have about 90% of business to come from repeat clients (Brokers and direct shippers) that we can downgrade to their lowest package and use it only as "backfill freight" finders if ever needed. The goal is to eventually build more relationships and eventually cancel our subscription.

Evotrux leaves a lot to be desired, from what I have seen it's just shippers posting their cheap freight that no one wants, and has also been sent to 30 different brokers. It's a good idea but seems like they are having issues with carriers reaching out directly to shippers on the platform.

 

[XPORTIN]

Safe to assume Loadlink is a major factor to a majority of trucking companies closing as they simply cannot justify 3500 per month

 

[MLCAR]

they go to LL and find that their freight gets moved

and that really is the problem, I remember a time when a shipper had no idea what a load board was now I have shippers telling me which ones I should try out LOL.

 

[Jim L]

A year ago I requested to Load Link to adjust their pricing model to a small monthly fee plus an additional charge structure for the number of postings a user put up. In other words, the more postings, the more cost. It was received with skepticism and I'm sure that the conversation did not go further.

My thinking was that larger brokerages and carriers would pay more, as they should, to cover the amount of loads they have to cover. It would also, if the per post price was right, limit the junk postings, (just looking, test, do not call etc). If there was an actual cost to put one up, one might think twice for putting it up just to scope things out. It might just clean up those guys who post the same junk each day. Ideally it would create better data and users may find it a much better tool than what it is now.

I agree that LL's price increases are being used to weed out those who are looking to easily double broker and use the tool for other nefarious reasons.

 

[AgentSmith]

They wont let you sign up unless you are located in the states. If you try signing up they will refer you to LL. My question is, why is LL a higher-cost product than DAT when DAT has more features? LL has not changed one bit since the beginning, what is this technology they are investing in? I'd like to know. I can see how they would want a piece of the pie when carriers were making good money but why the delayed reaction now?

We have an account for both, set up many years ago. When we signed up for DAT we were told that it was superior for domestic US and cross border even though LL pulls data from DAT. I can't remember the reason for this.

Just curious how Canadian based carriers are only signing up on DAT?

 

[MLCAR]

Just curious how Canadian based carriers are only signing up on DAT?

I believe an MC/DOT registered to a PO Box does the trick....

 

[WALTERK]

I believe an MC/DOT registered to a PO Box does the trick....

I don't think FMSCA will issue an MC number to a PO Box address though. To the best of my knowledge, you need to have a permanent business address in the USA with an MC number issued to a US based carrier. Obviously, this entails compliance with IRS, taxes, employment laws, etc.
The competition in the US makes it impossible for LL to ask for that kind of money. Truckstop is just as good and it would gladly get their customers. Canadian carriers/brokers have only themselves to blame for this situation by monopolizing them. Undoing it will be hard.....

 

[Tip15]

They wont let you sign up unless you are located in the states. If you try signing up they will refer you to LL. My question is, why is LL a higher-cost product than DAT when DAT has more features? LL has not changed one bit since the beginning, what is this technology they are investing in? I'd like to know. I can see how they would want a piece of the pie when carriers were making good money but why the delayed reaction now?

We have Loadlink, DAT 360 & Truckstop.com. You are not required to be in the USA to be a member of DAT360.

 

[Tip15]

Holy moly! $3500??? For what? What else are you getting in your 'package' to justify an increase of $1500 bucks?

In my opinion nothing, but like others here they have us and know it...Can't wait to run into Claudia at some point soon to discuss...

 

[Michael Ludwig]

All it takes for the industry to get off the LoadLink train is for responsible, upstanding, reliable load brokers, and it only takes a few with good loads, to start using another platform. Once load brokers go elsewhere, carriers will undoubtedly follow.

 

[DanielB]

In my opinion nothing, but like others here they have us and know it...Can't wait to run into Claudia at some point soon to discuss...

That’s funny.

Do you really think Claudia gives a shit about you and that she’s charging you too much. All she cares about is if your quarterly cheque clears.

Think back… have you ever had a good customer experience with them?

The only person winning here is Claudia.

She’s doing absolutely nothing to improve the industry, customer relationships.

And now if you are on the top tiers of the service they want you to share your rates to populate their rate index… and if you don’t… you pay a penalty.

Brutal.

 

[Freight Broker]

That’s funny.

Do you really think Claudia gives a shit about you and that she’s charging you too much. All she cares about is if your quarterly cheque clears.

Think back… have you ever had a good customer experience with them?

The only person winning here is Claudia.

She’s doing absolutely nothing to improve the industry, customer relationships.

And now if you are on the top tiers of the service they want you to share your rates to populate their rate index… and if you don’t… you pay a penalty.

Brutal.

Loadlink and the others are gatekeepers, and as such they can call the shots. Its much like you calling a customer to get them to buy from you. There again the gatekeeper decides how well you do to a large extent. I guess the lesson in all this is to be a gatekeeper.

 

[loaders]

If there was ever a “good “ time to quit LoadLink, it would be now, in my opinion. There seems to be lots of available capacity. Every second email we get is from a carrier looking for freight and we are posting fewer and fewer loads as we can cover them easily with a phone call or two. Granted, when the economy turns I might be changing my mind, but our need for LL right now is minimal.

 

[XPORTIN]

The sad reality is that the more people who cancel their loadlink subscription, the higher the rates will go. This obviously isn't feasible for most carriers which leads me to wonder how this fiasco will play out over the next few months/years...

 

[satan]

We connect to remote desktop and run our enterprise system, email and web browsing through it including loadlink, in theory the IP should always be the same regardless of your physical location.

I did not take the call from Loadlink so I'm not sure if they knew based on IP or were just fishing and the person who talked to them gave away too much.

Each time you visit a site, the site fetches your user agent. So for example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/115.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

So they can see from what device you enter LL on, IP doesn't matter.

LL forced us to pay $30k for not working in Canada

 

[tasuinam]

Each time you visit a site, the site fetches your user agent. So for example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/115.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

So they can see from what device you enter LL on, IP doesn't matter.

LL forced us to pay $30k for not working in Canada

If you are not in Canada then I guess you need to pay to use services - I have blocked so many numbers from dispatchers abroad aho offer 'high paying loads' ... it's a nusiance .. so if you are legit no issues - but if not then a good way to weed out scammers

 

[satan]

If you are not in Canada then I guess you need to pay to use services - I have blocked so many numbers from dispatchers abroad aho offer 'high paying loads' ... it's a nusiance .. so if you are legit no issues - but if not then a good way to weed out scammers

Can you reread what you wrote? We pay the monthly user fee for about 20 employees per month. Just because a few employees work in the states doesn't mean that we should pay a heft fine of $30k.