Melbourne, Australia-based Fluent Cargo recently launched its multimodal technology focused on advising and educating global shippers on their route planning decisions.

Inspired by the traveler site Rome2Rio, leadership founded the company in 2021 to offer a more transparent, user-friendly solution for small to medium-size shippers and freight forwarders.  

“We want [global shipping] to be self-explanatory, easy to navigate and easy for you to find the answer you are looking for,” Maja Bernstein, vice president of industry relations at Fluent Cargo, told FreightWaves. “We believe enabling the user to see all ocean results, air results, transit times and different route options will help spark the creativity of our industry and help you think differently about what all your routing options actually are.”

Bernstein, whose father co-founded the company, explained that transparency of choices pairs well with the freight industry just as it does with personal travel.

“We wanted to create something to expedite what a forwarder has to go through, checking a million different sites or platforms. We want them to choose the best route for their needs so we consolidate as many choices for them as we can,” she said.

Features available today include route and schedule searching. By simply entering an airport, seaport, city or country, forwarders can see a mix of options, giving them the capability to make the best choice based on all information provided.

As the company continues to add features, it will provide two-tiered plans for certain premium features, but company officials told FreightWaves they believe they will always have a free plan to inspire freight forwarders to think differently about their supply chains.

“We know from our survey of how the industry performs pre-shipment research that freight forwarders spend many hours each week searching for routes, carriers, schedules and prices, visiting multiple sites to gather the data, then more time on other sites double-checking their findings. They can do all of that in minutes using Fluent Cargo,” said CTO Andy Greig.

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Throughout the next quarter, customers can expect updates to the system including scheduling a whole week of container pickups, vessel sharing agreements, alliances and feeder network integrations, and routing guidance for river barges, rail options and domestic trucking rates.

Bernstein, who gets to take her experience from previous ocean shipping work and translate it into technology, is excited to be involved in developing a tool that can help smaller freight forwarders compete.

“Seeing the amount of time and information that goes into creating our unique algorithm to be able to parse through all of this data and provide these results in milliseconds. … I think it is just really exciting to be a part of this new approach.”

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