The Spastic, Multitasking Ballet that Supplies American Business

He is 31, dark and good-looking, bearded and beefy, with a huge handshake and a big grin. Dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, he could be a trucker himself, but the rig he’s driving consists of a computer, a cell phone, two desk phones with four incoming lines, and a double monitor on which he is shuffling a bewildering variety of windows. One shows dozens of loads available from Bridgeport, Connecticut. Another is a panel of four instant message conversations he’s having with colleagues elsewhere in the building.

Click, zoom, here’s a map of the route from Bridgeport to Tampa. And here’s a “load editor” that contains all the information he needs to complete an order: the point of origin, the destination, the contents, the weight, the packaging (boxes? drums? pallets?), the price the customer is paying for the shipment, the amount Molina can offer the carrier, the specified pickup and delivery times. Is there anything special the driver needs to do when he arrives at the loading dock? When will the gate be open? It’s all here.

Click, zoom, here’s a profile of the carrier. How many trucks does it run and what kinds? What’s its performance record? How much insurance does it have?

Click, zoom, here’s an email from a trucking company Molina works with regularly: a list of drivers and their hopes for the next few days. Jeff in Bridgeport “needs money and miles.” Frank in Hicksville, New York, wants to go “straight to Orlando, no questions.”

As he moves from screen to screen and phone to phone, Molina switches between English and Spanish: from “Thanks, brother” to “Perfecto, gracias,” from “Atlanta, Georgia” to “Atlonta, Yore-iya.” He can speak Spanish into the phone while typing English into a message. With a click and a tap, he copies a carrier’s number and pastes it into the load editor, then sends a confirmation email to the trucking company. Four forklifts weighing 27,000 pounds and valued at $99,000 have just been dispatched to Eagan, Minnesota. Jeff will get his miles. No sooner does Molina finish off that arrangement with his right hand than he punches up a chortling phone line with his left. “EnriqueslinehowcanIhelpyou?”

If Chicago Central looks and feels like a trading room, TMC is a tech startup. The office is full of transport-themed art and reclaimed wood and has a rooftop deck that offers a spectacular view of the Loop. In one conference-size room, a lone engineer sits surrounded by four walls of pinned-up task lists, flow charts, and multicolored spreadsheets that visualize customer John Deere’s efforts to optimize its six-continent supply chain. In another space, software engineers work quietly, writing algorithms that fit loads into trailers and sort through routes and rates and commodities and dates to choose the best carrier for any given shipment.

The idea at TMC is to put Robinson’s software platform, called Navisphere, directly into the hands of companies—usually “the biggest of the big,” says Kass—that want to use it for themselves. Instead of taking a commission on each transaction, as Kass’s colleagues at Chicago Central do, TMC offers tailored versions of the software on a subscription basis, giving clients the ability to book their own transportation for rates they can negotiate directly with carriers.