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If your freight moves in bulk, by rail, by truck, or across both, IntelliTrans TMS was built for the operational problems your team is managing every day. The conversation starts with understanding your network.
Built for the way bulk commodity freight actually moves
Most TMS platforms were built for parcel and consumer goods freight. Bulk and break-bulk commodity shippers have always needed something different.
Bulk commodity logistics is a different problem
Rail car cycle times, demurrage exposure, transload handoffs, and freight billing complexity are not edge cases for your operation. They are the core of it. IntelliTrans TMS was built around them, not configured to handle them.
The industries we serve
Grain elevators and fertilizer distributors. Resin producers and chemical manufacturers. Lumber mills and containerboard plants. Steel producers and metals service centers. Aggregate operations and mining companies. Crude oil and refined products shippers. The commodities are different. The freight challenges are not. IntelliTrans TMS was configured for each of them, not forced to fit.
Agriculture
You are moving grain, fertilizer, or feed ingredients on rail schedules that don't hold for harvest delays or weather. Car supply at origin, transit visibility across Class I and shortline routes, and demurrage exposure at the elevator and at the receiver all require daily attention. When the crop moves, there is no margin for a visibility gap.
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Plastics & chemicals
You are managing tank car and covered hopper fleets across multiple origin points, multiple customers, and a regulatory environment where documentation errors on hazmat shipments are not recoverable by a phone call. Billing complexity on these movements runs deep. Carrier errors are common and expensive when they go undetected.
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Forest & building products
You are running flatcars, boxcars, and centerbeams to mills, distribution points, and box plants on production schedules that don't absorb transit variability well. A delay in the rail network affects more than a single shipment. It affects inventory at the receiving facility and the production schedule waiting on it. Exception handling at scale requires more than a spreadsheet and a carrier phone number.
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Energy & fuels
You are running tank car fleets in an environment where documentation accuracy, regulatory compliance, and carrier billing precision are not optional. A misrouted car or a mis-billed shipment in this commodity class carries consequences that reach beyond logistics. Visibility, audit, and accountability have to work together across every move.
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Metals
You are coordinating gondola and flatcar movements across origin mills, processors, and service centers where equipment availability and transit predictability feed directly into downstream production planning. A car that sits two days longer than expected is not just a logistics problem. It is a scheduling problem for the facility waiting on it.
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Mining & aggregates
You are moving unit train volumes where car cycle time drives cost and revenue. A car sitting idle at origin or destination for an extra day or two compounds quickly across a fleet. Manual tracking doesn't scale to the volume. And when railroad performance falls short, the data to hold them accountable has to be ready before the conversation, not built after it.
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Rail TMS
Car tracking, dwell monitoring, demurrage management, and railroad accountability reporting, built for the shipper who owns or leases equipment and needs to know where every car is and what it is costing.
Truck TMS
Carrier management, dock scheduling, and rate benchmarking for the truck freight that moves alongside or in place of rail, in a dedicated application built for truck workflows, not adapted from rail.
Freight audit and cost recovery
Systematic review of carrier invoices for billing errors, incorrect rates, and duplicate charges, with dispute handling managed on the shipper's behalf. In 2025, the IntelliTrans audit process identified $1.26 million in cost avoidance for a single North American shipper by catching carrier billing errors before they were paid.
Shipment visibility and exception management
Real-time shipment status across rail and truck, with exception flagging built around the operational priorities of bulk commodity freight. When a shipment goes off-plan, your team sees it and can act before it becomes a demurrage charge or a missed delivery window.
Yard and asset management
Facility-level equipment visibility, load and unload tracking, and asset utilization reporting so your team knows what is in the yard, not just what is in transit.
Transload management
Visibility and execution support at the rail-to-truck handoff, so the transfer point between modes does not become the gap in your supply chain.
Data and analytics
Operational reporting, carrier performance scorecards, and benchmarking built from actual shipment history, so the conversations with carriers and internal stakeholders are grounded in data, not estimates.
What this looks like in practice
The complexity of bulk commodity rail freight doesn't show up cleanly in a product demo. It shows up in the middle of a quarter when you are managing thousands of shipments simultaneously, fielding exceptions, reconciling carrier invoices, and trying to hold service levels at receiving facilities that depend on your network performing.
Two examples from customers running IntelliTrans TMS today:
Two examples from customers running IntelliTrans TMS today:
A leading North American containerboard manufacturer uses IntelliTrans TMS to manage visibility and exception handling across its entire rail network. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, the team tracked more than 43,000 rail shipments and monitored over 6,000 delays, with each exception flagged and documented for operational transparency. The platform supports the customer's 85% in-stock target at box plants and generates the daily railroad performance reporting used to hold carriers accountable. Beyond the platform, IntelliTrans provided targeted training for inventory planners and rail-adjacent teams so those roles could answer operational questions independently, reducing the load on the core rail operations staff.
A leading consumer goods manufacturer relies on IntelliTrans TMS for freight audit and cost recovery across its North American rail network. In 2025, the audit process identified $1.26 million in cost avoidance by catching carrier billing errors, including incorrect rates and duplicate invoices, before they were paid. Every dispute is handled on the customer's behalf, and every action is documented for visibility across finance and logistics teams. In early 2026, the customer signed a new Master Service Agreement, a decision that reflects the role IntelliTrans plays as a long-term operational partner, not a transactional vendor.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long has IntelliTrans been working with bulk commodity shippers?
IntelliTrans has worked exclusively with bulk and break-bulk commodity shippers since its founding in 1992. The company began by helping shippers manage rail visibility and modal conversion from road to rail, and has built every subsequent capability, freight audit, yard management, truck TMS, and analytics, on that same operational foundation. Several of the company's earliest customers remain active customers today.
Can one platform manage both rail and truck freight for a bulk shipper?
IntelliTrans provides dedicated applications for rail and truck freight within a shared platform environment. Rail and truck operate as distinct applications, each built for the specific workflows of that mode, accessible through a shared login. For bulk shippers who move commodities by both rail and truck, or who manage transload operations between modes, this architecture eliminates the data reconciliation and visibility gaps that come with running two unconnected systems, while preserving the operational depth each mode requires.
What industries does IntelliTrans TMS serve?
IntelliTrans TMS serves bulk and break-bulk commodity shippers across six industries: agriculture, plastics and chemicals, forest and building products, metals, mining and aggregates, and energy and fuels. Each of these industries moves high-volume freight by rail, truck, or both, with operational complexity that includes rail car management, freight audit, transload operations, and shipment visibility across modes. IntelliTrans has served shippers in these industries since 1992.
What makes bulk commodity logistics different from standard freight shipping?
Bulk commodity freight involves a set of operational constraints that standard freight platforms were not designed to manage. Rail car fleet management, demurrage and detention exposure, transload operations between rail and truck, load consistency requirements for commodities like grain, resin, and aggregates, and volume variability tied to harvest cycles or production schedules all require purpose-built tools and workflows. A missed window in bulk freight doesn't mean a late delivery. It often means a halted production line or accumulating demurrage charges across an entire car string.