Clyde Rosenbaum
Activity
Reviews
89 reviews · average 2.8
Two months in, getting started was a nightmare - API keys were a paper chase, carrier event names didn't match the docs, and I spent days mapping feeds which ended up costing me a detention fee. Support crawled and onboarding assumed I had an engineer on call, not something a driver-owned operation can afford.
Bottom line: the app’s live updates can save time, but inconsistent push notifications make it unreliable for tight-day planning. After twenty years on the road through Midwest ports and rail yards I appreciate the carrier timestamps when they arrive, yet too often the handoff from terminal to drayage sits unchanged for hours or the app lags - so I check it first, then still have to call to confirm.
Three years using Coupa - it saved my bacon when a Tier 1 supplier went silent: real-time alerts linked a spend spike to shipment delays so I rerouted orders the same day. On Midwest runs that stopped what would have been a full-day blackout and a pile of angry customers.
When our reefer dipped below safe temp on I-75 and the Sensefinity tracker stopped sending data mid-haul, I called support expecting a quick fix. Instead I got automated replies, an offshore rep who kept saying “check the SIM” and a 36-hour wait that cost us a spoiled pallet and a customer chargeback - after twenty years on the road I expect better from a paid service.
Price was the hook - for less than what I used to pay per lane, ShipsGo's live ETAs and map cut the number of calls to brokers in half. Midwest runs and razor-thin margins; it paid for itself the first month, so yeah, worth every cent.
I've used Wialon for three years. The mobile app's offline map caching and quick trip replay saved me more than once driving across dead spots out here in the Midwest - I can pull exact stop times to calm a picky dispatcher, though the UI gets cluttered when I'm trying to add notes between pickups.
Paid top-dollar for Chain.io expecting the pre-built connectors to actually save us time, but after 20 years on the road dealing with integrations I got clunky mappings, surprise per-connector fees and onboarding consulting that doubled our bill and kept trucks sitting idle for weeks. Not worth the sticker price - support's answer was “we'll need custom work” that cost more than the platform.
...Coyote's support dropped the ball - an hour on hold, then bounced between reps who passed along wrong delivery info, so the load missed the appointment and I got hit with detention and lost pay. Two decades on the road and I've never seen service waste my time like that.
Twenty years behind the wheel in the Midwest, I appreciate tools that don't waste my time - Alliance's mobile app nails live tracking: ETA updates stayed honest on a string of cold-loads last month and saved me from sitting outside for hours. Dropped one star for occasional lag, but it's the best tracker I've used on the road.
Last month Saddle Creek left three full trailers of our product sitting at their Louisville DC for 48 hours past cut-off with no unloading or paperwork - lost a prime retail slot and ate a $4,500 charge. After 20 years of driving Midwest lanes I’ve never seen tracking go cold like that: nobody answered calls and their portal didn’t update, so don’t count on them when timing matters.