Using Turvo's routing guide

Turvo’s routing guide is an automated shipment tendering and carrier assignment workflow. By creating routing guides in your tenant, you set rules and parameters to efficiently send shipment offers (or tenders) to your established carrier connections in the sequence that works best for your company. You can also choose to automatically post the shipment to your Turvo network and/or load boards, if none of your first choice carriers can accept the shipment.

Note: This feature is not enabled by default. Reach out to your Turvo representative to enable Routing guide for your tenant.

This guide covers the following topics:

• How the routing guide works
• Enabling routing guides
• How to create a routing guide
• Configure your routing guide
• Shipment routing guide errors

How the routing guide works

Routing guides automatically send shipment offers to an established list of carriers and/or post the shipment to your Turvo network or load boards once a shipment has been created. Below is an overview graphic of the flow of the routing guide.

First, the routing guide must be created in Turvo and then the carrier sequence configured. See the How to create a routing guide and Configure your routing guide sections below for more information.

Next, whenever a shipment is created matching the parameters of the routing guide, Turvo will automatically send an offer for the shipment to the configured carrier in the routing sequence. Lastly, if none of the carriers accept the shipment offer, the shipment will be posted to your Turvo network and/or load boards for coverage. Posting the shipment to your Turvo network and/or load boards is an optional workflow, but encouraged to ensure your shipments are covered!

Enabling routing guides

Enabling routing guides for your tenant is a self-serve process. 

Navigate to the admin console by clicking on your profile icon in the top right corner of your dashboard and select Admin console from the drop-down menu.

Click the Rules card.

Select Carrier from the left-side menu. Under Configurations, click Routing guide.

Routing guide Rules

Click the Enable routing guide feature toggle to enable routing guides, and select the features you want to use routing guides for. You can choose whether or not to use routing guides for shipment creation, TDI, and O2SP.

Click SAVE, and the routing guide feature is enabled.

Important note: Routing guides cannot be switched off using this toggle. Reach out to your Turvo representative if you need to disable routing guides.

How to create a routing guide

To create your routing guide, follow the steps below.

Note: Creating and managing routing guides is only available for Admin and up users.

Step 1:

Login to your Turvo tenant and locate the + icon (create menu). Click the + and select Routing Guide from the drop-down menu.

Step 2:

In the Create routing guide modal, complete the available fields:

• Account: Enter a customer or location account by typing the name and selecting from the drop-down menu.
  • Note: If no account is entered, the routing guide will apply to all shipments meeting the origin/destination and start/end date parameters. This field is optional, but is great to make routing guides for specific accounts.
• Origin and Destination (required): Enter the origin and destination locations for the routing guide. You can make this as broad or specific as you’d like by only entering the city, state, or entering an actual location name (i.e. broad location = Austin, TX vs. specific location = Ship Shoppe). The more broad the origin and destination locations, the more shipments will fall into the parameters of the routing guide.
  Protip: you can use the first three digits of a zip code to target a region.
• Start date (required): Auto-populates with Today. Select the start date of your routing guide by typing the date or clicking the field and selecting the date from the calendar.
  • Note: The start date must be today’s date or a date in the future. You cannot set up routing guides retroactively.
• End date (required): Auto-populates with the date a year from today’s date. Select the end date of your routing guide by typing the date or clicking the field and selecting the date from the calendar.
• Equipment: Choose the appropriate equipment from the drop-down menu. Entering a specific equipment type for the routing guide will narrow the parameters, so only shipments with the selected equipment type will qualify for the routing guide.  

Step 3:

Once all of the required information is entered, the CREATE button will change from grey to blue. Click CREATE to save your new routing guide.

Once a routing guide is created, the information entered (Account, Origin/Destination, Start/End date, and Equipment) is available to view and edit in the Settings block of the Details tab of the routing guide.

Configure your routing guide

One your routing guide is created, you then need to establish your preferred carrier sequence, the offer duration timer (optional), and activate the routing guide.

Step 1:

If not already in the routing guide profile, find your routing guide via the navigation bar and selecting Routing Guide. 

Step 2:

Click the Details tab and scroll down to the Routing sequence section.

Step 3:

To begin creating your Routing sequence, click + Add to sequence.

Step 4:

In the Add offer modal, select the offer type being added to the sequence. Types of offers available include:

Carrier offer

Carrier offers will send the shipment offer to the entered carrier account or carrier group.

• Carrier: Start typing the name of the carrier or carrier group and select from the drop-down menu. Carrier accounts and groups need to be created in Turvo before sending offers.
• Carrier offer email: 
  • For carrier offers, the email will either auto-populate with the designated Offer contact for the carrier profile, or you can manually enter the email address of the offer contact.
    Note: See our How to set up an offer contact in a carrier profile for more information on designating specific carrier contacts for offers.
  • For carrier groups, the carriers will auto-populate and the email field toggles off.
• Contract: The contract information is added automatically when a carrier is selected.
• Rate: Enter the offer amount.
• Offer duration (minutes): Enter the amount of time (in minutes) the offer will sit with the carrier before moving on to the next offer in the routing sequence. Turvo defaults to 30 minutes.

Contracted offer

Contracted offers send the shipment to whatever carrier is entered in the contract. The rate of the offer is also determined by whatever contract is selected at the time of offer type creation. For more information on creating contracts in Turvo, see How to create a contract.

• Carrier offer email: The email will either auto-populate with the designated Offer contact for the carrier profile listed in the contract, or you can manually enter the email address of the offer contact.
• Contract: Search for a specific contract in your tenant by typing in the contract name and selecting from the drop-down menu.
  • Note: Contracts must be created in Turvo prior to adding them to your routing sequence.
• Offer duration (minutes): Enter the amount of time (in minutes) the offer will sit with the carrier before moving on to the next offer in the routing sequence. Turvo defaults to 30 minutes.

Note: You can also add contracts via the Contracts tab. Hover over the contract line item, click the vertical three dot icon, and select Add to routing guide from the drop-down menu.

If your routing guide is active when a contracted rate changes, Turvo automatically updates the routing guide with the updated rate, based on low-cost precedence. When this happens, Turvo creates an event on the timeline to alert you.

Global rate

Global rate offers send the shipment to the entered carrier account and rates are based on the entered global rate. For more information on creating global rates in Turvo, see How to create global rates.

• Carrier: Start typing the name of the carrier and select from the drop-down menu. The carrier account needs to be created in Turvo before sending offers
• Carrier offer email: The email will either auto-populate with the designated Offer contact for the carrier profile listed, or you can manually enter the email address of the offer contact.
• Contract: Search for a specific global rate in your tenant by typing in the global rate name and selecting from the drop-down menu.
  • Note: Global rates must be created in Turvo prior to adding them to your routing sequence.
• Offer duration (minutes): Enter the amount of time (in minutes) the offer will sit with the carrier before moving on to the next offer in the routing sequence. Turvo defaults to 30 minutes.

Note: Global rates can also be added via the Contracts tab. Hover over the contract line item, click the vertical three dot icon, and select Add to routing guide from the drop-down menu.

Posting

Creating a posting offer will post the shipment to your Turvo network or a selected load board. If added to your sequence, it will be locked as the last step of the sequence. That way, if no carriers accept the shipment, it’s posted to your network for assignment.

When adding a posting offer, you can choose to send the shipment to multiple carriers, or post to your Turvo network/integrated load board. When an entry is made into one of the fields (either Carriers or a checkbox is selected under Networks), the other field will no longer be required. Rate is required regardless of selection.

• Carriers: Enter one or more carriers to make the posting available to.
• Rate: Enter the amount of the offer.
• Networks: Select whether the offer will be posted to My network, DAT, and/or Truckstop.com.
  • Note: An integration to DAT and Truckstop.com required to post to the load boards.

Step 5:

When all fields are complete, the SAVE button will change from grey to blue. Click SAVE to add the offer to your routing sequence.

Repeat the steps to add as many offers as needed to your routing sequence.

Editing your Routing sequence

When all offer types are added to your sequence, you can rearrange the order of the sequence if needed. To rearrange the order, hover over the number to the left of the line until the arrange icon appears. Then click, drag and drop the offer type to the correct order sequence.

Note: Posting offers are locked to the last step of the sequence.

To remove an offer from your sequence, hover over the right side of the line and click REMOVE.

Protip: Use the Low cost precedence toggle to sort the routing sequence in order of the lowest cost carrier rates.

Make sure to click SAVE to save your changes once your routing sequence is in the desired order!

Step 6:

Next, you need to activate your routing guide. In the Activate sequence block, click the available toggle to the blue ON position. Whenever the toggle is on, it will change from Not activated to Active.

Toggling on the feature will automatically route new shipments meeting all of the parameters decided at creation through your Routing sequence.

Important note: Leaving this toggle off will prevent your shipments from being automatically moved through your set Routing sequence. Make sure to turn the toggle on to utilize the feature!

Make sure to click SAVE to save your changes!

Protip: To remove a routing guide from your tenant, return to the Routing guide page, click the 3 dot icon to the right of the routing guide, and click Delete from the drop-down menu.

Final step:

Once all the steps above are complete, the automated routing guide kicks in with every new shipment creation. You can manually opt shipments out of a routing sequence by using the Automate with Routing Guide checkbox in the shipment creation modal. Unchecking this box will ensure the shipment is opted out of automatic routing.

Here is what the Create shipment modal looks like for the TL mode:

Here what the Create shipment modal looks like for Intermodal mode:

You will see the routing guide-specific Equipment lengths, Services, and Hazmat fields. You can offer Hazmat-specific rates and pricing and routing based on various sizes and types of equipment on an intermodal shipment.

When a shipment meeting the routing guide requirements is created, it’s automatically offered to the established routing sequence. If a carrier in the sequence accepts the offer, the routing sequence will end and the carrier auto assigned to the shipment. If a carrier doesn’t accept the offer, the offer expires, and/or the offer is withdrawn, the next carrier in the routing sequence is offered the shipment.

Note: You can set hours of dispatch in Admin console to control times when you do not want offers to expire. For example, if your offer is set to expire in one hour, and your hours are set from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, offers sent after 5:00 PM won’t expire until one hour into the next operational day. See the Understanding and updating tenant settings article in the Help Center for more information.

For additional information on managing your offers, see our How to send an offer to a carrier article.

Routing guide sorting and filtering precedence

Turvo uses build priority, or precedence, for how routing guides are sorted and filtered based on the following matching criteria:

• Mode
• Equipment size
• Equipment type
• Service 

If multiple routing guides have the same build precedence, they are additionally sorted by matching mode. Routing guides with the same mode take higher precedence over the routing guides without a mode. 

Hazmat is an exact match. If the shipment is not a hazmat shipment, routing guides are only filtered by shipments that are designated as non-hazmat. And, similarly, routing guides are filtered by shipments that are designated as hazmat.

You can view the progress of the offers in the Carriers tab. The status of the offer is shown in the Status column, along with the amount of time left for the carrier to accept or reject the offer.

Shipments posted to your network can be found in the Marketplace under the Shipments tab.

You can also view updates made to your routing guide in the Timeline tab. Entries include the change made, who made the change, and what day/time the change was made.

Note: Entries with More expand the timeline to show additional information, such as screen captures of the change. Timeline events without More show all relevant info in the text.

Applying a routing guide to an existing shipment

If you have already created a shipment, you are still able to apply a routing guide. Navigate to the shipment you want to add the routing guide to. In the Overview section, click on Routing guide and then click the Automate with routing guide check box.

The routing sequence displays. By default, only two routing sequence steps display. These are the active sequence and the upcoming sequence. The full list is available by clicking on More details.

Restarting and resuming routing guides

You can restart and resume routing guides in certain conditions. Use this feature when:

• A carrier is removed from the shipment.

• The routing guide completes, but no carrier accepts the offer.

• The routing guide drops off during execution.

The RESTART button becomes active in these conditions. RESUME becomes active if there are still pending sequences in the routing guide.

Shipment routing guide errors

In certain cases, shipments do not fully execute on the routing guide. Route configuration changes and shipment changes can lead to the shipment and routing guide no longer being compatible. 

In these cases, you are notified of configuration changes in the Timeline section of a shipment. The timeline entry displays the error message at the top of the entry with the Reason for the error shown underneath.

The following table lists the error messages and associated reasons.