Keelway
Truckstop ITS alternative

Truckstop's TMS is built around Truckstop. Keelway is built around your inbox.

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Truckstop ITS is the enterprise TMS family above ITS Dispatch — sold as a bundle with the Truckstop load board and RMIS carrier vetting, priced behind a demo. If you live inside the Truckstop ecosystem and want one vendor for everything, it's a coherent answer. If you're an SMB brokerage that wants AI carrier-email triage and a price you can see — and to keep using whatever load board you already pay for — Keelway is $400/month flat, unlimited users, no setup.

What Truckstop ITS actually is

Truckstop ITS is the enterprise TMS sitting at the top of Truckstop's product family. It's a separate, heavier product from ITS Dispatch (Truckstop's published-price entry tier), aimed at mid-market and enterprise freight brokerages. The product itself is competent — it covers the standard broker TMS surface area: load lifecycle, rate engines, multi-branch operations, accounting hooks, EDI. None of that is novel; what's distinctive is the bundle around it.

The strategic pitch is single-vendor. Post loads on the Truckstop load board. Vet carriers through RMIS (the carrier-onboarding platform Truckstop acquired). Dispatch and settle through Truckstop ITS. Optionally use Truckstop's payments and factoring partners. One contract, one login, one throat to choke. For a brokerage that wants to consolidate, that's a real value proposition.

Side-by-side: Truckstop ITS vs Keelway TMS

 Truckstop ITSKeelway TMS
Built forMid-market & enterprise brokeragesSMB freight brokerages (3-30 users)
PricingDemo-gated, per-seat, bundle-dependent$400/mo flat — published
Sales motionDemo + quote + procurementSelf-serve, live in <1 day
Load board lock-inStrongest with Truckstop load boardWorks with any load board (DAT, Truckstop, 123Loadboard)
Carrier vettingRMIS bundle (extra line item)FMCSA trust scoring built in
AI carrier email triageNoYes — core feature
Carrier rate extractionNoYes — >95% accuracy
ContractAnnual, enterprise termsMonth-to-month, cancel anytime
Single-vendor stackYes (the whole pitch)No — best-of-breed alongside your load board

Sources: truckstop.com, RMIS product pages, broker-community pricing threads (May 2026)

What Truckstop ITS is

A competent enterprise broker TMS whose real differentiator isn't the TMS itself — it's the rest of Truckstop. The load board is one of the two dominant marketplaces in U.S. trucking. RMIS is one of the two serious carrier-vetting platforms. Stitching them into a single TMS workflow is a legitimate moat for brokerages that want to consolidate vendors. If your procurement team's KPI is "number of vendor contracts," Truckstop has the cleanest answer in the category.

Where Truckstop ITS actually wins

Two honest wins, both real:

  • Single-vendor stack. Load board + TMS + carrier vetting + payments under one contract, one login, one rep, one invoice. For a 50-person brokerage doing 5,000+ loads/month, consolidating those line items is worth real money in operational simplicity alone. Keelway does not offer that bundle.
  • RMIS carrier-vetting integration. RMIS is the deepest carrier-onboarding platform in the market — insurance monitoring, authority tracking, watchlists, the whole package. Truckstop ITS plugs into RMIS natively. If you already pay for RMIS or your shippers require RMIS-level vetting, that integration is a feature Keelway doesn't try to match — we use FMCSA + continuous reply scoring, which is sufficient for most SMBs but not equivalent to RMIS for enterprise compliance use cases.

Where Keelway wins

Everywhere else, if you're an SMB brokerage. Four concrete reasons:

  • AI carrier-email triage as the core product. Truckstop's AI is in fraud detection on the load board, not in your inbox. Keelway reads every inbound carrier reply, extracts the offered rate from the email body, scores the carrier, and ranks the top five inside Gmail or Outlook. That's the actual workflow brokers spend their day on.
  • Load-board freedom. Keelway is load-board agnostic by design. Run DAT, Truckstop, 123Loadboard, or all three — Keelway sits next to whatever you already use. With Truckstop ITS, the gravity pulls you toward the Truckstop load board, and the value of the bundle erodes if you don't use it.
  • Pricing you can see. $400/month flat, no setup, no per-seat math, no procurement cycle. Truckstop ITS is demo-gated and quoted as a bundle, which means the headline TMS number isn't the number you actually pay.
  • SMB-native onboarding. A 5-person brokerage can sign up for Keelway, import carriers, and run a real load the same business day. Truckstop ITS is a sales-led enterprise motion — appropriate for who they sell to, wrong shape for an SMB.

The bottom line

Truckstop ITS is the right TMS for mid-market and enterprise brokerages that want a single-vendor Truckstop stack and have the budget for it. Keelway is the right TMS for SMB brokerages that want AI carrier-email triage, a published flat price, and the freedom to keep using whatever load board (including Truckstop's) already works for them. Different buyers, different products. Compare honestly and pick the one shaped like your brokerage.

Frequently asked questions

What is Truckstop ITS?+

Truckstop ITS is Truckstop's enterprise TMS product family — the suite that sits above ITS Dispatch in their lineup. It's marketed primarily to mid-market and enterprise brokerages and is tightly integrated with the Truckstop load board, RMIS carrier vetting, and Truckstop's payments/factoring rails. The pitch is single-vendor: post loads, vet carriers, dispatch, settle, all under one Truckstop login.

How much does Truckstop ITS cost?+

Truckstop does not publish ITS TMS pricing. It's demo-gated, quoted per-seat, and typically bundled with a Truckstop load-board subscription and RMIS Carrier Onboarding seats. Real-world quotes brokers share land in the high-three-to-low-four-figures per month range once you include the load-board and RMIS line items. Keelway TMS is $400/month flat, unlimited users, published.

How is Truckstop ITS different from ITS Dispatch?+

ITS Dispatch is Truckstop's entry-level TMS — published pricing around $149/month, aimed at small carriers and very small brokers. Truckstop ITS (the enterprise TMS) is a different, heavier product family with deeper broker workflows, configurable rate engines, multi-branch support, and enterprise integrations — and enterprise pricing to match. They share a brand and some plumbing but are not the same product.

Do I have to use Truckstop's load board to use Truckstop ITS?+

Technically no, but in practice yes — the value of Truckstop ITS comes from the bundle. The TMS, the load board, and RMIS carrier vetting are designed to feel like one product. If you don't use the Truckstop load board, you're paying enterprise TMS pricing for a tool whose strongest differentiator is integration you aren't consuming. That's where standalone alternatives like Keelway start to make more sense.

Does Truckstop ITS have AI carrier email triage?+

No. Truckstop's AI investment is concentrated in fraud detection on the load board side (suspicious posting patterns, double-brokering signals) and in RMIS carrier vetting. The TMS itself does not parse inbound carrier-quote emails, does not extract rates from email bodies, and does not rank carrier replies inside Gmail or Outlook. Keelway is built around that exact workflow as the core product.

Can I switch from Truckstop ITS to Keelway?+

Yes. Keelway imports carriers, customers, lanes, and historical loads via CSV from any TMS, including Truckstop ITS. A typical switch takes under a business day for an SMB brokerage. You can keep using the Truckstop load board (and RMIS, if you have it) — Keelway is designed to sit alongside any load board rather than replace it.

When does Truckstop ITS actually win over Keelway?+

Truckstop ITS wins for mid-market and enterprise brokerages that want a single-vendor stack — load board, TMS, carrier vetting, and payments under one Truckstop contract — and have the budget and procurement appetite for that bundle. Keelway is the right answer for SMB brokerages (3-30 users) that already have a load-board strategy and want a broker-first TMS with AI email triage at a published $400/mo flat.

Switching from Truckstop ITS?

Keep your load board. Add AI email triage. $400/mo flat.

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