The freight industry is in a state of perpetual motion, facing shifting markets and constant volatility. At the recent Journal of Commerce Inland Distribution Conference in Chicago, Ryan Soskin, Co-founder and CEO of GoodShip, shared insights into how major enterprise shippers are preparing for the future by prioritizing continuous network optimization over traditional, static procurement models.
The Problem with Fragmentation
For years, shippers have adopted various technologies, yet they often face the persistent challenge of data fragmentation. Data sits in silos across disparate systems—load data from the TMS, real-time location information, RFP results, and third-party market rate benchmarks (like DAT, Truckstop, and FreightWaves Sonar)—requiring substantial manual effort to piece together.
The conversation highlighted the difficulty this creates for transportation leaders:
"We're collecting data, and then they sit in their silos, or it would require someone to then export it, and now we're going to try to export it, and what are we going to do? Are we going to throw a person or maybe try to throw a generic AI at a problem to try to understand it?" – Interviewer
GoodShip addresses this by unifying all relevant transportation data into a comprehensive "control tower," acting as a system of action.
Purpose-Built Procurement and Orchestration
GoodShip defines itself as the all-in-one platform for freight orchestration and procurement. While the procurement aspect is understood, GoodShip excels because it is purpose-built for transportation use cases, moving beyond the limitations of generic procurement tools used by large enterprise shippers.
The platform’s orchestration side utilizes a powerful recommendation engine that pinpoints "hot spots" in a shipper's network. These hotspots identify where shippers are:
• Overpaying relative to the market or internal budgets.
• Receiving poor on-time service (pickup, delivery, or blended).
• Facing high spot exposure or volume not moving via contract.
Crucially, the platform allows shippers to take corresponding corrective action from the same screen. Ryan Soskin explained that this shifts procurement from a “once a year event, set it and forget it” into a model that provides agility and resilience.
The Shipper’s Voice: Seeking Agility
Ryan Soskin noted that while transportation procurement leaders initially gravitate toward GoodShip's specialized procurement tools, transportation operations VPs are often drawn to the orchestration side, focusing on maintaining the network and holding carriers accountable.
A primary concern among shippers today is anticipating market shifts. Even during a soft market, shippers are adopting new tools to prepare for the inevitable return of volatility and disruption. Rather than being reactive and waiting for service or costs to spiral, they want systems in place to manage volatility through continuous adjustments.
"I think they're mostly concerned that the market is going to change... they want to make sure that they're in a position to be agile, make adjustments, make shifts, make continuous optimization." – Ryan Soskin, Co-founder, CEO of GoodShip
Enhancing the Carrier Experience
The conversation also highlighted a significant advantage of GoodShip: improving the experience for participating carriers and brokers. Historically, procurement tools have been a headache for logistics partners.
A key learning from Ryan Soskin’s 15 years in freight and technology, including building the pricing team at Convoy, was that carriers often have to guess when bidding, leading them to build a buffer into their prices.
"Anything I have to guess on becomes priced into the rates I give you." – Interviewer
GoodShip solves this data asymmetry by pulling detailed historical information into the bid process. Carriers see exactly what they are signing up for, including trailing 12 months of seasonality, distribution of pickup and drop-off days, and average lead time.
By providing data symmetry, carriers don't need to guess. This not only allows them to avoid lanes they cannot efficiently service (e.g., lanes with weekend pickups) but also allows them to bid more competitively.
"They don't have to build in a buffer. They actually can price it more competitively because there are no surprises. And that leaves a more durable routing guide." – Ryan Soskin, Co-founder, CEO of GoodShip
This focus on the partner experience extends to the orchestration side via scorecarding. GoodShip provides carriers with self-serve access to configurable scorecards that clearly show how they measure up against a specific shipper’s nuanced performance metrics (such as how on-time service is defined). This two-way accountability allows both shippers and carriers to collaborate toward better service and achieve outcomes.
The Evergreen Approach
Whether a shipper is running a network RFP or frequent mini-bids, GoodShip remains an evergreen tool for continuous management. Actions that keep the network optimized include: running off-cycle mini bids, tweaking the routing guide, capping volumes on certain lanes, or leveraging performance improvement plans for service issues.
The technology allows shippers to proactively address deterioration points in the network, ensuring that, regardless of market volatility, they are positioned to make data-driven corrections swiftly.