Introducing Instant Bidding: Helping Carriers find the Right Job at the Right Price

April 30, 2018Ziad Ismail

Today we’re announcing the addition of Instant Bidding which gives carriers control and lets you name your price directly from the Convoy app without the need for phone calls or negotiations. Earn More, Less Effort Convoy was founded to make trucking easier and more efficient. We launched our free mobile app to let carriers instantly accept jobs in the app, with immediate visibility into the rate and confirmation. We launched our free mobile app with “Accept Now,” making pricing immediately visible and jobs immediately bookable. We introduced Convoy QuickPay to ensure drivers get paid quickly after completing a job, recently added Auto-detention to make sure that carriers get paid fairly without any hassle and launched new ways to find loads and reduce deadhead. Accepting a job at the offered price is still available and is the best way to secure the job you want but we know every carrier’s situation is different, and your availability and truck locations change frequently, so assuming that one price will work for all isn’t feasible. Carriers ultimately understand their business and the market better than anyone else and based on their feedback, we are releasing the next innovation in freight: Instant Bidding.

“Instant bidding allows me to plan in advance, keep my trucks full and get paid what my time is worth. If the price is right for me, i’ll just accept it instantly. If not, i really like that I can state what the load is worth to me without needing to call-in and get the load” – Vincent, Owner Operator at Phillips & Phillips Transportation LLC

Instant Bidding offers carriers several advantages:

Carriers can submit bids directly through the app with one tap. There is no need to call and haggle on the phone.
All loads done through Convoy benefit from Auto-Detention and free QuickPay.
Does not reveal your bid to other carriers. We want to avoid the “race to the bottom” where each carrier is trying to underbid the prior bidder.
Bidding rewards higher quality carriers. We consider both the bid and the quality of the carrier (falloff, on-time, etc) to award loads.

With Instant Bidding, Convoy’s marketplace now learns from real-time signals on both the carrier and shipper side. Learning fast is critical to building an efficient marketplace for both shippers and carriers. For example, if there is an extreme weather event, Convoy can immediately recognize the impact on the ground from drivers who are the first to know. By better adjusting to the market, we have been able to reduce the matching time for loads by 65%. This helps carriers not only get more loads at fair rates but also get loads faster. Giving Carriers Control To use Instant Bidding, carriers start by opening the Convoy app and finding loads you like, using Search, Request a Load or personalized recommendations. Once you find a particular job you want, you can either “Accept Now” which instantly guarantees you the load at the given rate, or “Submit a Bid” if you’re interested in taking the load at a different rate. If the bid is accepted, you are awarded the load and can accept and complete the job in the Convoy app.

Bidding is now available for all drivers and carriers nationwide on the latest version of the Convoy app. New to Convoy? Sign up for free here!

Ziad Ismail

Ziad Ismail is the Chief Product Officer at Convoy. He is responsible for data science, design, product management and program management. Before Convoy, Ziad was the Chief Product Officer of Marchex, Chief Executive Officer of CitiKey, and served in other leadership roles at Microsoft. Ziad earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and MSc in Computer Science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.