The Partnership at a Glance

The freight market is volatile, cyclical, and unforgiving of slow decisions. SONAR and Transfix have come together around a shared conviction: that market intelligence and operational execution are most powerful when they work as one — not as separate tools brokers have to stitch together themselves.

Transfix made SONAR a priority integration in its TMS from the outset. Market data is the backbone of how brokers navigate rate volatility, and having it surfaced natively inside an operational workflow — rather than living in a separate tab — changes how decisions get made.

About the Presenters

Brad Guinane brings 15+ years of freight market experience to his role as CRO at SONAR. His perspective centers on the practical application of data — not just what the numbers say, but how they drive action in a brokerage environment.

Carly Gunby spent seven years at Transfix across multiple roles, including running its brokerage operations before the company pivoted to a pure technology platform. That operational background — having built Transfix’s tools while running freight on its own P&L — is central to why the product looks the way it does today.

How Transfix Was Built — and Why It Matters

Transfix operated as a freight broker for over a decade before making the decision to divest its operations and bring its technology to market. Every feature in the Transfix TMS and cost model has its origin in a specific pain point the team encountered while running their own brokerage — battle-tested on their own P&L.

A key practice that shaped their thinking: periodically having everyone at Transfix — regardless of title — cover and operate freight directly. This forced the team to understand what behaviors drive cost, where the market creates advantage, and what signals matter at the load level.

NFI was Transfix’s first TMS licensee. When NFI chose to roll the product out across its entire organization — after moving away from a proprietary system they had invested in for years — Transfix had clear confirmation of market fit.

What Brokers Are Actually Struggling With

Both presenters have spent significant time on brokerage floors over the past two years. The pain points they hear most consistently fall into two categories:

On the TMS Side

• Existing systems take brokers only so far — then require a patchwork of vendor relationships to fill the gaps.
• Managing multiple point solutions increases operational overhead and inches up cost per load.
• Workflow automation, carrier apps, and decision logic are often missing or bolted on rather than built in.

On the Cost Model / Data Side

• Brokers have access to data but struggle to translate it into decisive action.
• The question is rarely “what does the market look like?” — it’s “why can’t we be more competitive given what we know?”
• Most teams lack the analytical support to unpack their own data at a granular level — by user, by lane, by behavior.

The SONAR Data That Drives Broker Decisions

SONAR aggregates transportation data across modes to give logistics operators a complete picture of what’s moving the freight markets. For brokers, the most actionable data centers on the contracted truckload market — where the real volume lives.

Why Contracted Market Data Changes the Game

80–90% of shipper freight moves on contract, yet for years the only publicly available data was spot rate data. SONAR captures anonymized routing guide transactions to show:

• Volume flows — is freight demand increasing or decreasing in a given market?
• Tender acceptance and rejection rates — how is capacity responding to demand?
• Lead times — how far in advance are tenders being transacted before freight prices in the spot market?

Transfix reporting dashboard: spot margin, backup margin, pickup volume, and delivered margin by week.

The reporting view above shows how Transfix surfaces margin data alongside volume trends — giving brokers a complete picture of where they’re performing and where opportunity exists.

Beyond Rates: The Shift in How Customers Use SONAR

Leading brokers are now asking “what combination of signals tells me how to price this load and win the right freight?” — not just “is this the right rate?” SONAR has built on top of its core data sets using natural language processing to provide actionable market scoring — telling users whether a market or lane is tightening or loosening and by how much.

The Transfix TMS: Operations at a Glance

The Transfix TMS is purpose-built for freight brokerages. Every module was designed from a specific operational pain point. The screenshots below from the live session illustrate the core workflow.

Shipments Management

The Shipments view gives brokers a real-time pipeline across every load status. Issues are flagged inline, reducing the need for manual tracking outside the system.

Routing Guide

Sourced Rates: carrier-by-carrier rate, weekly capacity, and confirmation status per lane.

The Routing Guide surfaces every contracted lane with its assigned carriers, sourced rates, and capacity confirmations — giving brokers an instant read on where they have coverage and where they have exposure.

Transfix + SONAR in Practice: The Cost Model Framework

Transfix’s cost model is where SONAR data becomes operationally useful for brokers. The platform takes market signals and transforms them into specific, actionable pricing intelligence tailored to each broker’s own buying behavior and historical data.

The Cost Model Logic

The framework works in a sequence:

• 1. SONAR provides market signals — current and projected rates, volume trends, tender rejection rates, lead time data.
• 2. Transfix merges those signals with the broker’s own historical transaction data.
• 3. The cost model identifies where the broker is buying well versus where they’re losing their competitive edge.
• 4. Analysis goes down to the user level — which reps are slow to respond, which lanes have the most volatility, where lead time decisions are costing margin.
• 5. Brokers receive specific behavioral recommendations: cover earlier, adjust rates in specific regions, change how they’re responding to a shipper’s tender patterns.

Buying to Market: The Dashboard in Action

Buying to Market summary: $817M total spend, 273K shipments, $2,991 avg spend per shipment — buying 3% below market.

The Buying to Market report answers the most important question on any brokerage floor: how are we buying relative to the market? The summary view shows total spend, shipments, average spend per shipment, and whether the broker is buying above or below market in aggregate.

Top Strong Lanes and Top Opportunity Lanes: buying comparison by lane, avg rate, and carrier count.

The lane-level breakdown surfaces where a broker has a structural advantage (buying 17–19% below market on their strongest lanes) versus where they’re overpaying (10–12% above market on opportunity lanes).

Buying trend by assignment and creation lead time: longer lead times consistently yield better buying outcomes.

Brokers who cover freight with 49–96 hours of lead time buy materially better than those covering same-day. This data gives operations managers a concrete behavioral target.

RFP and Contract Pricing

Contract RFPs kanban board: Plan, In Progress, Submitted, Award Review, and Closed stages with due date tracking.

The Contract RFPs module manages the full mini-bid and network bid lifecycle — from planning through award review, in a single kanban view.

RFP lane detail: 23 lanes, 10K total volume, $1M estimated revenue — with per-lane rate and margin visibility.

Lane edit panel: generated contract rate, estimated carrier rate, and estimated margin with percentile and premium settings.

Within each RFP, brokers get lane-by-lane visibility into rate, volume, margin, and estimated revenue — all in one place before a bid is submitted.

Rate Coach: Real-Time Negotiation Intelligence

Rate Coach: real-time negotiation guidance with list rate, rep target, shipper rate, and 30-day lane high/low/average.

Rate Coach gives reps negotiation context at the moment of decision. The rating indicator, counter-offer suggestion, and 30-day lane range mean reps don’t have to guess whether to accept, push back, or escalate for approval — directly reducing margin leakage from uninformed rate decisions.

Build vs. Buy: An Honest Assessment

One of the most candid exchanges in the session centered on whether brokers should build their own tools or buy purpose-built solutions. Carly’s perspective was shaped by having done both — running a brokerage while investing heavily in proprietary TMS and cost model development, then making the decision to bring that technology to market.

The Combined Value Proposition

The session closed with both presenters articulating what the SONAR + Transfix partnership means for brokers. Neither tool is asking brokers to choose — the combination is what creates the edge.

What Brokers Get From the Partnership

• Pre-priced discovery data updated daily from routing guide activity — the foundational layer for RFPs, mini-bids, and lane-level pricing.
• A cost model that reflects the broker’s own behavior — not a generic benchmark — so insights are specific to how that brokerage actually buys freight.
• A data analyst on every Transfix account to help brokers interpret and act on the data they have.
• Rate Coach and lead time analytics that translate market signals into in-the-moment negotiation guidance.
• Access to tighter-capacity market opportunities as the freight cycle shifts — positioned to capitalize rather than react.

Key Takeaways