I am excited to announce that Post.Bid.Ship. has hired its first Oregon-based sales representative. Josh Cady will work from Post.Bid.Ship.’s Portland, Oregon office and will primarily focus on subscription sales to shippers and brokers.

Josh is a 2006 graduate of Oregon State University with a degree in horticulture. He brings to Post.Bid.Ship. more than five years of experience selling products and services to the golf course, lawn care and wholesale nursery industries. Josh is also active in industry trade associations as a member of the Oregon Landscape Contractors Association and the Oregon Association of Nurseries Government Affairs Committee.

While Josh will sell Post.Bid.Ship. subscriptions to a variety of industries, we look forward to expanding our outreach to the agriculture, nursery and produce industries through Josh’s experience.

Thank you for allowing me to share this update with you. We look forward to sharing more news with you soon about Post.Bid.Ship.’s growing sales team.

As an alternative to hiring brokers, some shippers are setting up their own in-house services.

Traditionally, transportation brokers—middlemen who match available loads with empty trucks, charging a fee to the shipper—have been outsiders, either independent businesses or divisions of asset-based companies. A growing number of shippers, however, are setting up their own in-house truck brokerage operations, says Charlie Saffro of CS Recruiting LLC, a Chicago-based recruiting firm that specializes in third-party logistics and brokerage positions.

Saffro says she's been fielding a lot of inquiries lately from shippers who want to get into brokerage themselves. Done right, it can be a lucrative proposition, especially for shippers with high-value freight and backhauls to fill. She cites the case of one produce distributor that started an in-house truck brokerage in late 2012 and after just a few months, had earned $6 million in new revenue.

Saffro cautions that in order to succeed at this endeavor, the right talent must be in place. What typically happens is that a shipper hires an experienced manager who uses his or her knowledge and contacts to handle brokerage for the shipper's own freight, she says. Later on, the manager can develop a for-profit operation serving existing customers and eventually, new customers.

Sound interesting? It's important to note that there are upfront costs and that all transportation brokers are subject to federal regulations regarding licensing, bonding, contracts, and related matters. An excellent source of information is the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), which offers training and support services for new brokers. Learn more at www.tianet.org.

Article by Toby Gooley and republished from DCVelocity. To read original article, click here.

Below is an article I wrote for the Arizona Commerce Authority and it appeared on the ACA’s blog. You can read the article below or click here to visit the original post.

Post.Bid.Ship., Inc., launched in Tucson, Arizona by two 2010 MBA graduates from The University of Arizona, has spent the last 20 months building its online platform designed to help commercial shippers across North America buy empty trailer space on tractor trailers. Think of Post.Bid.Ship. as the Priceline.com of the commercial freight industry. Just as Priceline.com sells empty hotel rooms and airline seats, Post.Bid.Ship. helps the more than 1 million trucking firms operating across North America sell empty trailer space.

“We originally built our service for direct shippers and truckers, but after a few months of testing, freight brokers who are involved in 20-percent of all freight transactions were involved in more than 80-percent of our transactions,” said Micky Thompson, CEO for Post.Bid.Ship. Freight brokers are the fastest-growing customer segment for Post.Bid.Ship., yet the company had not designed a product to fully meet their needs. Thompson continued, “After witnessing brokers’ fast adoption rate, we knew we needed to build a product designed specifically for them, and we needed to do it quickly.”

The company set out in late fall to raise capital from investors to help bring Post.Bid.Ship. Enterprise to market. Post.Bid.Ship. Enterprise expands the company’s product offering beyond its existing product line.

“We needed $500,000 to do it,” said Micky Thompson, CEO for Post.Bid.Ship. “We had identified several potential investors, but because of the financial cliff facing the U.S. and the recent financial instability across the world, investors would not commit.”

Seeing first-hand the problems facing the private equity market, Post.Bid.Ship.’s management team set out to find alternative sources of capital. The goal was to find innovative ways to offset the need for investor capital, which could then motivate investors to participate. It was then that Jarret Hamstreet, COO for Post.Bid.Ship., re-applied for the Arizona Commerce Authority’s Fall 2012 Innovation Challenge. Hamstreet had applied for the same grant in the spring of 2012, “Despite not winning the Challenge in the spring, judges offered valuable feedback. We took that feedback, applied it, and as a result, we came back with a much stronger application in the fall. We also came back with the promise that we would leverage the grant to raise private equity from investors,” Hamstreet said.

Post.Bid.Ship., with its improved application, new product line under development, and a working prototype, proved successful. The company was selected a winner of the 2012 Fall Innovation Challenge and is using the grant money to hire additional staff members at its Arizona-based headquarters to help bring Post.Bid.Ship.’s new product, Post.Bid.Ship. Enterprise, to the market. It’s also using the money to leverage additional funding.

Thompson stated, “When we started writing our grant application, we had no investor commitments. However, we knew if we were selected, our investors would match the grant to help us reach our goal of $500,000.”

Investors exceeded their expectations. “By the time we were announced a top 25 finalist, we had several investors who felt becoming a finalist was enough credibility to invest,” stated Hamstreet. “When Post.Bid.Ship. was officially announced one of the six firms selected by the ACA for a grant, several investors called that day asking if they could invest.” Post.Bid.Ship. closed on an additional $286,000 in investor capital from around the country, matching the ACA grant by more than 123%.

When asked to offer advice to other entrepreneurs looking to apply for a future ACA grant, Thompson said, “Not winning the first time enabled us to take a hard look at our strategy, refine our product, and win the grant the next round. Applying is a win-win. If you’re not named a winner, take the advice the ACA offers and apply it to improve your company. If you are one of the firms selected, use the ACA’s endorsement as one the most promising technology ventures to leverage additional customers, vendors and investors. This is what we did at Post.Bid.Ship., and we feel this will help us grow in one of the country’s most innovative states.”

To learn more about Post.Bid.Ship., visit www.postbidship.com.

This morning, our development team released an update to PostBidShip.com incorporating several feature requests from users like you. Thanks for taking time from your busy schedule to send us your suggestions. If you would like to see us add a new feature or change an existing feature in Post.Bid.Ship., email me at ceo@postbidship.com or send me a tweet using @postbidship.

Below are some of the features we want to highlight:

- Post.Bid.Ship. Partners with Amazon.com and Microsoft
- Integrated Google Auto-complete for Address, City, State and Zip
- Added Zip Code to Loads per request from LTL Carriers

Post.Bid.Ship. Partners with Amazon.com and Microsoft

Post.Bid.Ship. has moved our hosting services to Amazon.com Web Services and Microsoft Azure platform to improve user experience. At Post.Bid.Ship., we are sensitive to our users’ experience. As a result of this, there are 3 items Post.Bid.Ship.’s management and development teams focus on regularly: Reliability, Performance and Scalability.

Unlike consumer websites, our website is dedicated solely to professional users within the commercial transportation space. When you serve professional users like our awesome users on Post.Bid.Ship., we must provide professional level service. We recently moved our database hosting services to Amazon.com and our web hosting services to Microsoft Azure.

Both Microsoft and Amazon are world class partners and in the short time we have been on these services, we have seen our website's performance level and reliability increase dramatically. In the last 7 days since we completed our migration to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, our uptime has been 99.9%. As we recruit additional commercial shippers, freight brokers and trucking firms to Post.Bid.Ship., both Microsoft and Amazon.com will be partners that will help us scale as we grow our services across North America.

Integrated Google Auto-complete for Address, City, State and Zip

Post.Bid.Ship. has partnered with Google to bring our users the ability to enter your freight information faster. Starting today, when you post a load of freight to Post.Bid.Ship., you will find that entering a city or an address will be faster because Google is now providing you with Google’s Auto-complete feature through Post.Bid.Ship.

Below is an example of how Google’s Auto-complete helps you locate the city and state you are entering. Selecting from the drop-down will auto-complete the city and state for you.

Below is an example of how auto-complete works for our Post.Bid.Ship. Enterprise users by allowing them to enter a pick-up or delivery address using the Google Auto-complete feature. Just start typing the address you wish to enter and Google will begin to auto-complete the address fields for you.

Now that this feature has been deployed to Post.Bid.Ship., we have removed the Address and City, State verification page that appeared before submitting your post. The combination of adding Google’s Auto-complete feature and removing the address verification page should aid our users in entering their posted loads faster while also helping our bidding users to be able to bid more accurately knowing the address, city and state are accurate.

Added Zip Code to Loads per request from LTL Carriers

Post.Bid.Ship. today added Zip as a field to our Post Loads page per the request of our LTL users. Daily, we receive feature requests from our users. Post.Bid.Ship users are the smartest users in the world and their feedback is invaluable to helping us build North America’s largest online commercial freight marketplace dedicated to only professional users.

Originally, our Post Load page for Request Quote did not include the Zip field. This was because many of the users on Post.Bid.Ship. in our early days were full truckload shippers and carriers and Zip was not as vital to them. With our growth in the Less Than Truckload industry, we have heard from our users that Zip plays a vital role in their ability to accurately bid. While we did add Zip to the Post Load page, we did not make the field required. This is because several of our users shared with us that they just don’t have the Zip all the time.

By adding Zip to Post Load, this will help our commercial shippers who know the Zip get more accurate bids. Below is how the Zip appears now on the Post Load page for Request Quote.

Thanks for allowing me to share with you just 3 of the many features we added to Post.Bid.Ship. this morning. If you have any additional feature requests for me and our development team at Post.Bid.Ship., please email me at ceo@postbidship.com and I will be sure to evaluate your request for incorporation into Post.Bid.Ship. 

Keep on truckin',

Micky Thompson
Chief Executive Officer

Often Jarret Hamstreet, my co-founder at Post.Bid.Ship., and I are complimented by our users for being quick to implement changes at our company. These changes by Jarret and me are done in an effort to make Post.Bid.Ship. the best product possible. Many of those changes come as suggestions from users just like you. Just last night, I responded to emails from users with feature requests for Post.Bid.Ship. Examples of the requests I received were to add pilot truck service to the site, a request that we expand to Israel and another request that we make Zip Code required on all posted loads. While we may not implement every request, we listen and take all feature request seriously so keep sending those requests to me at ceo@postbidship.com.

An example of such a feature Jarret and I are proud to have engineered at Post.Bid.Ship. is our Freight Alarm feature. Freight Alarms were designed and built based on users just like you telling us they didn’t want to be glued to the monitor looking for freight to haul. So we built an innovative system that intelligently locates the ideal freight for our brokers and carriers and emails them automatically when that freight is posted to our site.

We felt this innovative feature was so beneficial to our users, on November 3rd, 2011, Jarret and I submitted a provisional patent application based on Post.Bid.Ship.’s Freight Alarm feature to the U.S. Patent Office. The patent application documents the technology we developed that will pioneer how commercial shippers can now automatically locate via the Internet the ideal trucking and brokerage firms best suited to handle their commercial freight.

Why did we submit the provisional patent application so early in our product development cycle?

According to our patent attorney, who is world renowned for Internet product patents, Jarret and I needed to begin the patent protection process as soon as or before we began commercial activities or generated revenue from our product.

Because time was of the essence, Post.Bid.Ship. chose to file a ‘provisional’ patent with the U.S. Patent office instead of the ‘non-provisional’ patent because a provisional patent allows an inventor up to 1 full year to make improvements while also allowing us to commercialize the product at the same time. Further, filing the provisional patent application enabled us to claim “patent pending” status on our product.

One of the primary reasons Jarret and I are quick to implement improvements at Post.Bid.Ship. was not only because it is in our nature but because we wanted to take full advantage of that year provided by the U.S. Patent office to perfect our unique algorithm and technology at Post.Bid.Ship. This process allowed Post.Bid.Ship. the ability to seek patent protection while also allowing us to include the additional features we have developed over the last year. This will provide Post.Bid.Ship. the best opportunities to reach our goal of helping to make the commercial transportation industry more efficient for our loyal users while also protecting Post.Bid.Ship.’s core technology from potential imitators.

We are happy to announce that on November 2nd, 2012, Jarret and I along with our team at Post.Bid.Ship. officially submitted our final non-provisional U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 13/667,560 entitled “System and Method of Automatically Matching Cargo Carriers to Shippers” to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Thanks to all our users again for your loyal support of Post.Bid.Ship.!

I’m excited to announce that Post.Bid.Ship. has officially made your life one step simpler. With Post.Bid.Ship., you can now track all your freight bids in one place whether those bids were submitted via PostBidShip.com or with other means such as phone, email, fax, or a sales meeting.

From day one, Post.Bid.Ship. has helped commercial shippers and brokers get bids automatically by either inviting their carriers online using our innovative ‘invitation to bid’ or by using our patent-pending automated freight matching system called ‘Freight Alarms’. In our quest to help digitize your freight bids and make your life easier, we developed a new feature called ‘Manual Bid’.

With ‘Manual Bid’, commercial shippers and freight brokers can enter a bid manually on behalf of their brokers and carriers right into Post.Bid.Ship. This now gives you the ability to keep all your bids safe in one place. By tracking your freight bids in Post.Bid.Ship., you will be able to refer to those bids for years to come as well as clear your desk of all those post-it notes and clean out your email inbox.

To enter a 'Manual Bid', simply follow the steps listed below:

#1: After your load is posted, click on the ‘Manual Bid’ button.

#2: Select one of your existing Post.Bid.Ship. carriers or enter a new carrier. After the carrier and bid information is entered, hit the ‘Submit’ button.

#3: The 'Manual Bid' now appears on the post page. To award the 'Manual Bid', click the ‘Accept’ button.

If you have suggestions or feedback for new features you’d like to see on Post.Bid.Ship., please email them to me at ceo@postbidship.com. Thank you for your continued support!

Earlier this week, our development team released the Post.Bid.Ship. January 2013 Update to www.postbidship.com and the new features are now available to you.

This update included several user requested features as well as some changes our engineering team identified for improving our users' experience. Below is a description of some of the more important changes we applied to our innovative web service for matching commercial shippers and freight brokers with carriers.

Below are the features we released: 

- Added 'Save' Option to Request Quote
- Additional 'Decline Bid' Options
- Sunsetting 'My Bill To' for Post Standard, Post Plus and Combo Plus
- Updated 'My Bill To' to 'My Invoice Address' for Enterprise Plus

Added 'Save' Option to Request Quote

Our Enterprise Users have enjoyed the 'Save' feature which allows them to save a post and await more information. This new feature allows you to start posting your load, save it and come back later to complete the post in the future.

To give the 'Save' option a test drive, post a 'Request Quote' and at the bottom, select 'Save'. The post will appear in your 'My Posted Loads' as 'Saved'. Click the saved post in 'My Posted Loads' to start from where you last left it.

Located beside the 'Save' button, you will now see the 'Get Bids' button. This button will expand the 'Post' page allowing you to continue to post the load as you have in the past both inviting Post.Bid.Ship. registered brokers and carriers as well as inviting your existing brokers and carriers.

Additional 'Decline Bid' Options

After reviewing our 'Decline Bid' options that have been submitted using the 'Other' reason, we felt there should be 2 additional selections: 'Freight No Longer Available' and 'Prefer 'Bids With Equipment''.

Our goal in allowing our shippers to decline their bids is to communicate to bidders the reason why a bid was not selected. We have found that by doing this for all your received bids, our shippers receive better bids in the future. 

As our users continue to use the 'Other' option for declining a bid, our engineers will continue to review those 'other' reasons and add the most popular reasons to the drop-down in the future.

Sunsetting 'My Bill To' for Post Standard, Post Plus and Combo Plus

Not only do we regularly add features to Post.Bid.Ship., from time to time we will remove features that confuse or do not add value to our users' experience. 

'My Bill To' was a feature we introduced when we first built Post.Bid.Ship. Since then, we have migrated the actual tendering of a load to only our Enterprise Plus plan. With Enterprise Plus, users can generate a rate agreement where such billing informaton is necessary.

Now that Post Standard, Post Plus and Combo Plus users use the much shorter 'Request Quote' entry form when posting a load, 'My Bill To' has played a much less important role and has become unnecessary. Because of this, we have removed the 'My Bill To' for the 'Request Quote' feature.

As a result of removing this feature, users under the Post Standard, Post Plus and Combo Plus plans will no longer see 'My Bill To' on the 'My Account' page or the 'Post Load' page.

Updated 'My Bill To' to 'My Invoice Address' for Enterprise Plus

While we have removed 'My Bill To' for Post Standard, Post Plus and Combo Plus users, we have retained it for Enterprise Plus users. However, we have changed the name from 'My Bill To' to 'My Invoice Address'.

Our goal with renaming this feature is to simplify the purpose of the feature to better communicate its use. My Invoice Address is where you, as the shipper, want invoices mailed to you from your carriers and brokers that have submitted a bid and to whom you have awarded your post.

As before with 'My Bill To', 'My Invoice Address' will not be released to any user until you have officially awarded that user the posted load.

If you have any features you wish for me to share with our development team that you feel we should integrate into Post.Bid.Ship., please leave us a comment!

The federal government presently regulates carrier safety through a program called the SAFER STAT system. Under the SAFER STAT system, carriers are rated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration as being either “Satisfactory,” “Conditional” or “Unsatisfactory.”  A “Satisfactory” rating means there is no substantial evidence of non-compliance with safety requirements by a carrier. A “Conditional” rating means a carrier has been out of compliance with one or more safety requirements, while an “Unsatisfactory” rating means there is substantial evidence a carrier has been non-compliant with safety requirements.

In 2010, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration developed a stricter methodology to regulate carrier safety called Safety Measurement System (SMS) BASIC scores. The SMS BASIC uses data from a carrier’s roadside inspections, safety violations, and crash reports to calculate scores for seven categories. These categories include unsafe driving, hours-of service, driver fitness, controlled substances/alcohol, vehicle maintenance, hazardous materials compliance, and crash indicator. Each of these seven categories has a minimum acceptable score threshold a carrier must meet.

How does Post.Bid.Ship. evaluate the safety of our carrier members? At the time Post.Bid.Ship. launched in early 2011, many industry safety experts believed the federal government would implement the stricter SMS BASIC scores very soon.  Not wanting to recruit carriers and then potentially have to kick them out a few months later if they did not meet the new standards, we decided to adopt the stricter SMS standards from the beginning. By early 2012, the federal government still had not implemented the SMS scores and most safety experts did not expect implementation in 2012.  In light of these developments, we decided in February 2012 to hold carriers to the current SAFER STAT system that the federal government is still using today.

As for freight brokers, Post.Bid.Ship. requires its member brokers to have valid operating authority from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and to have the appropriate bond in place.  Current law requires a $10,000 bond but this will increase to $75,000 in October 2013, so we will be reviewing all Post.Bid.Ship. brokers next fall to ensure that all are in compliance with the new bond requirement.

Last week, Post.Bid.Ship. introduced several new features to www.postbidship.com. These new features include:

* Display Bidder Information when Bid Without Equipment Accepted

* Manage Optional Contact Information when Bidding

* See Load Size on ‘Freight Alarm Summary'

Display Bidder Information when Bid Without Equipment Accepted

One of our favorite shippers, Leticia from Arizona, requested we show a bidder’s contact information if their bid without equipment is accepted. What a great idea, Leticia! Starting today, when a shipper accepts a bid without equipment, the bidder’s name, email address, phone and fax will now be immediately displayed to the shipper. This will allow the shipper to be able to contact the bidder should the bidder not confirm equipment in the time required by the shipper.

Manage Optional Contact Information when Bidding 

Micky, our CEO, thought it would be only fair to allow premium member bidders to show their contact information like premium member shippers can show on their posted loads. Our Bid Plus and Combo Plus users can now choose to display any combination of their name, email address, phone number or fax number directly to the shipper. If users do not want to display any contact information they can leave the optional contact information unchecked when bidding on a load.

See Load Size on ‘Freight Alarm Summary'

The ‘Freight Alarm Summary’ email sent to brokers and carriers who have set their freight preferences now shows whether a posted load is a Full Truckload (FTL) or Less Than Truckload (LTL) shipment.

John P., one of our users, actually sent the suggestion for this feature to our CEO’s email address at ceo@postbidship.com. You can use this email address anytime to send your feedback and suggestions directly to the boss man.

If you have any suggestions for new features please leave us a comment! 

I am pleased to announce that we have introduced several additional features on www.postbidship.com. Below is the list of the new features recently released to PostBidShip.com and detailed below.

* Select Multiple Trailer Types on Post Page
* Display Optional Contact Information on Posted Loads
* Manage User Information in ‘My Contact Settings’

Select Multiple Trailer Types on Post Page

Several of our users have requested the ability to select multiple trailer types when posting their freight. Responding to those user requests, we now allow users to select up to three trailer types when posting a load. 

Display Optional Contact Information on Posted Loads

Our Post Plus and Combo Plus users now have the option to display contact information when posting a load. Users can choose to display any combination of their name, email address, phone number or fax number. If users do not want to display any contact information, users can leave the optional contact information unchecked when posting a load.

Manage User Information in ‘My Contact Settings’

Users can now easily manage their contact information, email addresses, and mailing addresses in the new ‘My Contact Settings’ located on the homepage.

If you have additional suggestions on how we can improve Post.Bid.Ship., please do not hesitate to leave a comment.