When Edge Logistics, a Top-150 freight brokerage, set out to improve load profitability and carrier experience, they zeroed in on a surprisingly persistent problem: sub-optimal appointment times.

Early morning pickups. Weekend holds. Excessive transit times. These inefficiencies weren’t just operational headaches – they were quietly narrowing carrier options, making it challenging to match the right drivers to loads.

1 month after deploying HubFlow’s touchless appointment optimization for a high-volume shipper, Edge is seeing measurable impact: a 4.9% reduction in carrier pay and a 9.2% increase in coverage with core carriers, all without adding operational overhead.

Here’s how they did it.

The challenge: carriers don’t want certain appointments

For Edge, suboptimal appointment times had long been a known issue, but not an easy one to solve at scale.

“When we are tendered pick-ups in the middle of the night, unless specified by committed carriers, it adds challenges to execution,” said Mark Higley, Vice President of Operations at Edge Logistics. “We typically see added cost exposure, service risk increases, and our ability to recover when issues arise becomes near impossible." 

These challenging appointments created a ripple effect:

• Higher carrier costs due to undesirable pickup times

• Increased risk of service failures, fines, and shipper cancellations

• Additional carrier sales workload to cover these shipments

The insight: 20–30% of loads had fixable appointment issues

During onboarding, HubFlow analyzed six months of Edge’s historical shipment data using its proprietary scheduling algorithm.

The findings were clear:

• 20–30% of loads had suboptimal transit conditions due to preset appointments

• Transit for almost all of these loads could be improved without violating shipper scheduling rules

The loads with “improvable transit” included:

• Early morning or overnight pickups that could have been rescheduled

• Weekend delays or holds that could have been date-changed 

• Excessive preset transit that was not optimized

“HubFlow had all the transit calculations and shipper rules for date changes built-in,” said Higley. “It made sizing this opportunity really easy.”

The analysis gave Edge both the confidence and the roadmap to act.

The bottleneck: manual rescheduling didn’t scale

Before HubFlow, Edge’s operations team tried to reschedule preset appointments manually through shipper scheduling portals.

In reality, this approach broke down:

• It was time-consuming and repetitive

• Better appointment slots were hard to find

• During busy periods, rescheduling took operations teams away from higher-value work

“Re-scheduling to optimize transit was highly inefficient for our operations team,” said Colin Golding, Operations Manager at Edge. “Every minute we spent rescheduling took time away from spot bidding, accepting new tenders, and other higher-value work.”

The solution: touchless appointment optimization with HubFlow

HubFlow automated the entire rescheduling workflow. Now, whenever Edge receives a new shipment with pre-set appointments:

1. HubFlow automatically scans the shipper’s scheduling portal for better times

2. Available slots are evaluated using HubFlow’s optimization algorithm

3. If a better appointment exists, HubFlow automatically rebooks it

4. HubFlow re-checks the portal for new availability every 15 minutes, for every shipment

5. Updates are synced directly into Edge’s TMS

“Checking the portal constantly to see if better times have opened up is extremely powerful,” said Golding. “It’s also the kind of work that no human operator would typically perform due to bandwidth constraints.”

Feedback from Edge’s carrier sales team on the optimized appointment times has also been extremely positive. “Since HubFlow started optimizing our appointment times, we’ve seen more capacity at better rates on lanes we used to struggle with,” said Vic Gupta, VP of Carrier Sales. “It’s made the freight easier to cover and reduced the amount of manual outreach needed from our carrier sales team.”  

The results: cost savings and improved pre-booking with no extra work

The data also supports this conclusion. By removing sub-optimal appointments and replacing them with optimized ones, Edge unlocked significant value:

• ~20% of eligible shipments were optimized for a large volume shipper

• Optimized loads had 4.9% lower carrier pay

• Optimized loads were 9.2% more likely to be covered proactively with core carriers 

• Zero touches for operations teams to reschedule these loads

“It’s a win-win-win,” said Higley. “Edge gains operational efficiency and cost savings, carriers receive more desirable transit conditions, and shippers benefit from stronger service execution and more consistent coverage.”

While the load-level impact is a positive for all parties, Edge is most excited about the data and insights that HubFlow is generating. “We can now identify patterns in appointment scheduling and transit,” said Higley. “This lets us collaborate directly with shippers to improve execution at a broader network level. Our goal is to operate as a true solutions provider, and HubFlow is giving us actionable insights to drive more strategic conversations with customers.”

Conclusion

Appointment time quality has a direct – and often overlooked – impact on whether carriers want to haul a load, which affects both carrier pay and booking velocity.

With HubFlow’s automated rescheduling, Edge Logistics was able to secure more optimal appointment times and unlock meaningful improvements in carrier pay and service, without changing any workflows or adding headcount.