AI for Tai TMS. Triaged along the keel.
You run your brokerage on Tai. Keelway sits on top of it — reading every carrier reply to your posted loads, extracting rates, scoring trust against FMCSA, and writing the accepted carrier + rate back into Tai once you've picked. No second inbox. No re-keying.
Why Tai brokers need an AI overlay
Tai is one of the best SMB-to-mid-market TMSs on the market. It ships native load-board posting, carrier management, dispatch, and invoicing in one screen, and its pricing starts around $995/month, which is how it has become the default stack for brokerages doing $5M–$80M in freight.
What Tai does not do, and does not try to do, is read the 40-odd carrier emails that hit your inbox within two hours of you posting a load. That inbound stream is where the actual judgment lives — which carrier to call back, who to decline, who looks like a double-broker — and it is still a pure-manual job in most brokerages running Tai today.
Keelway is the AI overlay for Tai that closes that gap. We do not touch Tai's order-entry or dispatch screens. We just pick up where Tai's carrier workflow ends — the inbox — and write the decision back into the Tai load record once you've made it.
What Keelway adds to Tai
Every carrier reply, triaged in seconds
FMCSA trust score on every reply
Top five along the keel
Accepted carrier flows into Tai
What a week on Tai + Keelway looks like
You post 80 loads a week. Tai posts them to DAT and Truckstop. Each one pulls 30–50 replies. Without Keelway, someone on your team is spending ~30 minutes per load reading threads and cross-checking MCs. With Keelway:
- Every reply is already triaged by the time you look at the load.
- Two red-flag carriers per week, on average, are caught before booking — double-broker domains, carriers with out-of-service authority, quotes from MCs that don't own the insurance.
- Dispatch never sees a carrier record they have to clean up. The one in Tai is the one Keelway wrote.
Brokers covering loads faster cover more loads. That is the entire business case.
Keelway deployment alongside Tai (under 2 weeks)
- Day 1–2. Gmail OAuth, Tai API keys exchanged. Keelway starts reading replies to loads you post today.
- Day 3–5. Your ranking weights get calibrated from your last 30 days of accepted quotes. A reefer brokerage and a flatbed brokerage should not see the same top five — and won't.
- Day 6–8. Tai write-back goes live. First accepted carriers flow back into Tai load records automatically.
- Day 9–12. Your first flagged "suspected double-broker" emails get labeled and Keelway's fraud detector learns the shape of your book.
- Day 13+. Steady state. You move on with your week.
How this compares to Tai's existing "AI"
Tai has shipped several automation features over the last two releases — automated carrier reach-out, some quote capture, a light auto-booker. Those features assume carriers are responding onTai's integrated reply channel. In practice, most carriers still respond to the broker's Gmail inbox — the email address on the load posting — which sits outside Tai's workflow.
Keelway is specifically for that inbound Gmail stream. If a carrier replies inside Tai's channel, great — you don't need us for that reply. If they reply to your broker email, Keelway catches it, triages it, and merges it back into Tai. In most brokerages running Tai, 70–90% of carrier replies still come through the broker's Gmail, which is why this overlay produces the lift it does.
For the full capability breakdown independent of TMS, see Carrier Email Automation. For a direct Parade comparison from a Tai broker's perspective, see the Parade alternative page.
Frequently asked questions
What is Tai TMS?+
Tai Software is a cloud-based transportation management system for freight brokerages, built for dry-van, flatbed, and reefer brokers across the US. Tai's entry tier starts around $995/month and is commonly adopted by SMB-to-mid-market brokerages. Tai ships native load-board posting, carrier management, dispatch, and invoicing.
How does Keelway integrate with Tai?+
Keelway connects to Tai via Tai's integration APIs and to your broker inbox via Gmail OAuth. When you post a load in Tai, Keelway reads the inbound carrier replies, extracts rates, runs FMCSA trust scoring, and surfaces the ranked top five. When you accept a carrier, the carrier + agreed rate writes back into the Tai load record — no double entry.
Do I lose any Tai functionality by installing Keelway?+
No. Keelway is an overlay, not a replacement. You keep using Tai for everything Tai does today — order entry, dispatch, invoicing, load posting. Keelway only adds the carrier-email triage layer and the trust score.
Is Keelway certified by Tai?+
We are a Tai ecosystem partner. Keelway's data access is scoped to load metadata and carrier records the broker has already created — we do not read billing data or shipper contracts.
Can Keelway write the accepted carrier and rate back into Tai?+
Yes. Once you accept a carrier in Keelway, the carrier record, MC/DOT, agreed rate, and contact are pushed back into the Tai load so dispatch can run without re-keying anything.
What does Keelway cost on top of Tai?+
Per-broker seat, billed monthly, no per-email charges. Tai customers typically pay less than 10% of their Tai seat cost for Keelway. Firm numbers on the first demo call.