Voice AI for freight brokers · 24/7 check-calls

The check-call is now an AI's job.

Freight brokers still run the industry on phone calls. 80% of tracking updates happen over voice because half the drivers and dispatchers don't answer email. Keelway's AI phone call agent handles every scheduled check-call, every appointment confirmation, and every detention-risk ping — 24/7, at disclosed-AI TCPA compliance, with structured ETA and exception data flowing back to your TMS. You stop paying coordinators to dial.

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71%

AI check-call pickup rate

Keelway call log, Q1 2026

24/7

coverage — no after-hours gap

Always-on voice agent

-73%

coordinator time on tracking calls

Keelway customer cohort

Brokers make everyone do phone calls — because the inbox doesn't work for drivers

Here is the dirty secret of freight brokerage: email is the carrier sourcing channel, but voice is the tracking channel. A dispatcher at a 15-truck carrier does not open email between 7am and 7pm — he takes calls. A driver at a wheel-stop can't read a tracking-update form on his phone with gloves on. So brokerage coordinators spend somewhere between two and four hours a day dialing carriers for ETA updates, hold music on, voicemail tag, re-dial. It's the single biggest time-sink in the job, and it's the reason every brokerage has an "after-hours check-call" coverage gap between 10pm and 6am.

Voice AI closes both gaps. An AI voice agent does not sleep, does not burn out on hold music, and does not forget to dial the 3am check-in on the reefer to LA. It dials, talks, captures structured ETA data, and writes it back to the load ticket in your TMS. The coordinator keeps the judgment work — exceptions, escalations, carrier-relationship moments. Everything else goes to the agent.

What the Keelway AI phone call agent does

Check-calls

Scheduled ETA updates — every load, on cadence

Configure per-load or per-customer call cadence: every 4 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, or on-exception. The AI dials the carrier, asks for the truck's current location and ETA, confirms appointment windows, and logs the result as a structured tracking event. No coordinator involvement unless the carrier reports a problem.

Appointments

Shipper and consignee appointment confirmations

Shipper scheduling teams take 20 minutes on a call. The agent handles it — confirms the PO, confirms the appointment window, asks about dock hours, and captures the gate-in procedure. Pushes everything into the load's appointment record in your TMS.

Detention

Detention tracking, caught in real time

The moment a truck crosses into a shipper/consignee geofence, Keelway starts a detention timer. At the policy threshold (usually 2 hours free, then billable), the AI calls the driver to capture the detention reason — dock delay, stuck in line, product not ready — and opens the accessorial ticket automatically. You bill detention you would have missed.

Exceptions

Breakdowns, reroutes, refusals — captured structured

When a carrier reports an exception, the agent extracts the reason (mechanical, accident, weather, HOS-out, refusal), captures the expected recovery time, and escalates to the on-call coordinator with the full transcript + structured record. No more "find out from the driver's dispatcher 90 minutes later."

Inbound

24/7 inbound carrier line

Carriers and drivers can call your broker-branded Keelway number anytime. The agent answers, identifies the load by carrier name / MC / phone number, captures the update, and routes escalations to the human on-call. No more after-hours voicemail-roulette.

Write-back

Structured JSON into your TMS

Every call produces a record: truck lat/long, current ETA, HOS remaining, sentiment, detention minutes, exception reason, transcript, recording URL. That flows into Tai, McLeod, Aljex, Revenova, Turvo, or Rose Rocket as a tracking event — and out to Macropoint / Project44 / FourKites if you push visibility to the shipper.

How a Keelway check-call actually sounds

A typical outbound call runs 45–90 seconds:

Keelway: "Hi, this is an AI assistant calling on behalf of Greenfield Logistics about load 88421 — reefer to Dallas, pickup this morning. Can you confirm the truck's current location and ETA to the consignee?"
Carrier dispatcher: "Yeah we're about 40 miles east of Albuquerque on I-40, driver says he's good for Dallas by 2pm tomorrow."
Keelway: "Got it — 40 miles east of Albuquerque, ETA 2pm tomorrow. Any concern about the 1pm to 4pm delivery window?"
Carrier dispatcher: "No, we're good."
Keelway: "Perfect. I'll pass it to the Greenfield team. Thanks for the update."

That call produced: truck lat/long (geocoded from "40 miles east of Albuquerque"), ETA (2026-04-23 14:00 CT), appointment risk (none), sentiment (positive), and a full recording + transcript filed against load 88421 in Greenfield's Tai TMS. Zero coordinator touches.

Voice AI the industry actually trusts

Freight has been through a bad cycle of half-working voice tools. Keelway engineered three things that the first-generation voice AI missed:

IVR and hold-music handling: Most carrier dispatch numbers route through a PBX with a menu tree. The agent navigates the tree, presses the dispatcher option, sits on hold without giving up, and resumes the conversation cleanly when a human picks up. First-gen voice tools hang up on hold music.
Disclosed-AI policy: We tell the carrier it's an AI. Every call starts with "This is an AI assistant calling on behalf of [broker name]." This is both the TCPA-safe default and — surprisingly — the reason our pickup rate is 71%. Dispatchers prefer a disclosed AI that takes 45 seconds to a coordinator who leaves three voicemails.
Driver-aware phrasing: The agent talks to a driver differently than a dispatcher. Short sentences, single question, no jargon, and a voice timbre we specifically tuned to be audible in a cab at highway noise. Most voice agents sound like a SaaS webinar; ours sounds like the old dispatcher who called yesterday.

Compliance — TCPA, DNC, and recording consent

We run every outbound call through a TCPA-safe rail: disclosed-AI at call start, honored DNC lists (federal + your internal), written consent tracked per carrier, and state-by-state call-recording notification. Recordings are retained for 13 months then auto-purged unless you extend retention for compliance. We publish our full telephony compliance posture on request.

How it fits into the rest of Keelway

The voice agent is the execution layer on top of Keelway for Brokers and delivery location alerting. When a geofence event fires or the ETA drifts past the window, the agent auto-dials the carrier to investigate — you don't click a "call carrier" button, the alert itself becomes the call. If you're already running carrier email automation, the voice agent closes the loop on the handful of carriers who simply won't answer email.

Pricing

Voice is an add-on, not part of the base plan: $399/mo per seat on top of the $799/mo flat broker plan. Flat monthly. Check-calls inside the US and Canada are unlimited on a Voice seat — no per-minute billing, no per-call surcharges, no minute minimums. Nothing is metered, so there is no rate card to look up. See pricing for the full breakdown.

One straight note on status: the voice agents are in early access. They run live in demos today, and we have no production customer deployment to point at yet. Book a demo, hear one work, and decide from that rather than from this page.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI phone call agent for freight brokers?+

An AI phone call agent is a voice AI that dials carriers on behalf of a freight broker — for scheduled check-calls, ETA updates, appointment confirmations, and detention-risk alerts. Keelway's agent places real phone calls, speaks to the dispatcher or driver, captures the current status, and writes the structured result back to the load ticket and your TMS. It handles 24/7 coverage without a human on the line.

How is this different from a dialer or a chatbot?+

A dialer places the call and hands it to a human. A chatbot is text-based and mostly handles inbound inquiries. An AI voice agent like Keelway's places the call, holds a natural conversation, routes around IVRs, handles hold music, parses voicemails, and comes back with a structured ETA or exception reason. It's a full replacement for the coordinator who used to make the call — not a tool the coordinator uses.

Do carriers know they're talking to an AI?+

Yes. Keelway identifies as an AI at the start of every call — it's both our policy and the TCPA / FTC-safe default. Carrier dispatchers and drivers overwhelmingly prefer the disclosed-AI call to the voicemail-tag they were getting from an overloaded coordinator. Our measured pickup rate is 71% versus 38% for the human-placed call it replaces.

What exactly can the agent ask and capture?+

Scheduled check-calls (truck position, ETA, HOS remaining, appointment risk), appointment confirmations (shipper / consignee window lock), detention tracking (time on site, reason for delay), exception reports (breakdown, reroute, accident), pickup and delivery confirmation, and POD follow-up. Every call produces a structured JSON record — driver status, ETA, exception reason, sentiment, detention minutes — that flows into the load ticket in your TMS.

Which TMSs does the call data write back to?+

Tai, McLeod LoadMaster, Aljex (Descartes), Revenova, Turvo, Rose Rocket. Every ETA or exception captured on a call becomes a tracking event on the load — visible to the shipper in the broker's tracking portal and in Macropoint / Project44 / FourKites if you push events out to those.

What does it cost per call?+

Nothing per call. Voice is a flat add-on — $399/mo per seat on top of the $799/mo flat plan — and check-calls inside the US and Canada are unlimited on a Voice seat. No per-minute billing, no per-call surcharge, no minute minimums. The whole breakdown is on the pricing page.

Can carriers opt out of the AI agent?+

Yes. If a carrier dispatcher says they prefer a human, Keelway routes future check-calls on that carrier back to a coordinator automatically. We also honor Do-Not-Call lists and TCPA consent frameworks for every outbound call.

Does the agent handle inbound calls too?+

Yes. Carriers and drivers can call a Keelway-provided broker-branded number. The agent identifies the load, captures the update, and routes escalations (damage, accident, refusal) to the on-call coordinator. Inbound handling is included in the same seat price — no separate receptionist product.