AI for McLeod TMS. Triaged along the keel.

Why McLeod brokerages need an AI overlay

McLeod is the incumbent TMS for a large share of top-100 US brokerages. LoadMaster is deeply wired into dispatch, settlements, EDI, and carrier management — and for most brokerages that are successful on McLeod, ripping it out to chase an "AI-first" TMS is neither realistic nor desirable.

What McLeod does not solve, and does not try to solve, is the inbound carrier email stream. When dispatch posts a load to the boards, 30–50 carriers respond to the broker's email within two hours. Reading those threads, cross-checking MCs, and surfacing the few genuinely good offers is a pure-manual job. Keelway is the overlay that closes that gap.

What Keelway adds to McLeod

How this compares to McLeod's existing automation

McLeod ships automation inside LoadMaster — auto-assign rules, EDI-driven carrier status, integrated load-board posting, and a growing set of AI-adjacent features. These are strong for the outbound side of the workflow. They do not address the inbound Gmail stream that most McLeod brokerages still triage by hand, because most carriers still reply to the broker's email — the contact on the load posting — not into a McLeod-integrated channel.

Keelway is specifically for that inbound Gmail stream. We do not compete with McLeod's auto-assignment engine; we feed it better-qualified carriers so auto-assign makes the right call more often.

What a week on McLeod + Keelway looks like

A mid-sized brokerage running McLeod typically posts 300–800 loads a week. Each one pulls 30–50 carrier replies. Without Keelway, somebody on the team is spending 20–30 minutes per load reading threads and cross-checking authority. With Keelway:

• Every reply is already triaged by the time anyone opens the thread.
• Red-flag carriers — double-broker domains, MCs with out-of-service authority, quotes from dispatchers representing MCs that do not own the insurance — get caught on the ranked list before booking.
• Dispatch never has to clean up a carrier record, because the one Keelway wrote back to McLeod is correct by construction.

Deployment alongside McLeod (under 2 weeks)

1. Day 1–2. Reply address issued + McLeod API credentials exchanged. Keelway starts reading replies to loads posted today.
2. Day 3–5. Ranking weights calibrated from your last 30 days of accepted quotes. A reefer team and a flatbed team should not see the same top five for a given load — and won't.
3. Day 6–8. McLeod write-back live. First accepted carriers flow back into LoadMaster automatically.
4. Day 9–12. First flagged "suspected double-broker" emails get labeled; Keelway's fraud detector learns the shape of your book.
5. Day 13+. Steady state.

For the full capability breakdown independent of TMS, see Carrier Email Automation. If your shop runs on Tai or Aljex instead, we have dedicated pages for each: Tai TMS · Aljex.