A common misconception is that artificial intelligence can fix everything. AI is indeed a powerful tool, but like any tool, it needs a purpose and parameters. In freight brokerage, AI can be used to eliminate human errors — with the proper guidance. Drumkit has successfully harnessed the power of AI and automation to eliminate freight broker errors and increase operational efficiency.
Here’s what to do and what not to do to eliminate errors from brokerage operations with the help of AI:
Don’t Build Dashboards
“Everyone’s hunting for the ‘AI solution’ that will transform their supply chain. They’re looking in the wrong place,” Drumkit CEO Dhruv Gupta says. “The transformation isn’t in the AI. It’s in the data architecture underneath it.
“I see the same pattern everywhere: Companies have incredible operational data locked in systems that can’t talk to each other. Their TMS knows about TL shipments, their CRM knows about their opportunities, their other TMS knows about their LTL shipments — but none of them know the full story. So they build dashboards — lots of dashboards. But dashboards don’t make decisions. People do. And people need more than pretty charts; they need systems that can actually act on insights.”
Good-looking dashboards can’t prevent bad mistakes.
“The companies winning right now aren’t the ones with the fanciest AI,” Gupta says. “They’re the ones who figured out how to connect their System of Record to their System of Intelligence.”
With that connection:
- Clean data flows automatically from operations to analysis.
- Intelligence layers can trigger actions back in operational systems.
- Teams get recommendations, not just reports.
- Errors are avoided — with every load, every day.
“Your data is already there. Your systems are already working. You just need to connect them properly,” Gupta said.
Determine What You Need
At Drumkit, we help freight brokers determine how to deploy AI with the DRUMS framework effectively:
- Define Automation Priorities. Recognize repetitive, error-prone, time-consuming tasks that drain productivity, including document processing, email management, and data entry.
- Rethink Workflows and Data. Identify where information gets stuck or requires manual intervention — and where errors are made.
- Understand Team Concerns. Provide proper training that focuses on how AI can augment freight brokers’ skills and help them reduce errors.
- Monitor Performance Metrics. Track time savings, error reduction rates, and user satisfaction.
- Scale What Works. The magic of AI is that, if incorporated correctly, its use will naturally expand across the enterprise.
Build a Data Foundation
“Stop hunting for AI magic,” Gupta advises. “Start building the data foundation that makes AI actually useful.”
An $80 million freight broker contacted Drumkit earlier this year after its second failed AI pilot. It had spent months testing an “AI assistant” that was supposed to revolutionize its carrier communications.
“The demo was flawless. The pilot? A disaster. Why? It was generic and lived in a separate window. Their ops team had to copy carrier info from their TMS, paste it into the AI tool, get a response, then copy that back into their system,” Gupta says.
The freight brokerage’s ops manager told the Drumkit team that the AI assistant actually made them move slower — and still left plenty of room for error.
“The AI was smart. The workflow was broken,” Gupta explains. “This is the problem with most generic and sometimes even freight AI: They run on the fringes of your operation instead of plugging into it.”
Integrate the Data
When we built Drumkit, we started with integrations. Drumkit’s AI-powered freight broker software:
- Pulls data directly from your TMS.
- Sends communications through your own inbox and portals.
- Updates details and statuses automatically.
- Works inside your workflow, not beside it.
- Eliminates manual errors.
Now that freight broker’s AI doesn’t just work in demos, it works in reality.
Drumkit: AI-Powered Tools Built for Freight Brokers
Drumkit’s mission is to transform freight brokerage through intelligent automation, empowering operations teams to work smarter, not harder — and eliminate avoidable errors. And we’ve listened carefully to users’ feedback to build indispensable AI-powered freight broker software.
Our tools include:
- AI-Powered Smart Autoreplies that drastically reduce response time.
- Automated Load Building eliminates manual data entry errors.
- Load Matching to enable quick and accurate carrier selection.
- Intelligent Sidebar to empower brokers to see all load information across platforms in one place.
- Automatic Status Updates that keep all parties informed from the time a shipment is scheduled until it is delivered.
Learn what AI can do for your freight brokerage. Book an introductory call.
