Welcome & Introduction
Hugh Kirkpatrick and Mike King opened the conference and introduced the combined team. The framing was simple: bring the operational depth Crown built over nearly three decades in air freight together with a modern, connected platform — and keep building it around what operators actually do all day.
Following the April 2026 merger with Crown Data Systems, Tenet now supports more than 400 customers and partners across the U.S. and Canada, spanning cartage, air freight, linehaul, and warehouse operations. This was the first time the combined community was in one room — and the agenda was built to be a two-way conversation, not a set of announcements.
State of the Cartage Industry — Moderated Customer Panel
Hugh Kirkpatrick moderated an open conversation with operators from across the network on where the business is headed and where the friction really lives.
Philipp Weirauch joined from the Tenet side to field product questions.
- Connectivity is the number-one lever.The panel kept returning to one point: clean, fast data to forwarders drives everything downstream — phone volume, staffing, and customer trust. Several operators put it plainly: whoever gets forwarders the best data wins the freight.
- Good communication changes who you can hire.When the system carries the operational knowledge, dispatch no longer depends on the one 25-year veteran who "knows everything." Panelists saw that as a direct answer to a tight labor market.
- Real-time visibility is now the baseline.Amazon-style expectations have moved into freight. ETAs and tracking went from nice-to-have to table stakes in about five years.
- Kill the duplicate entry.Juggling a TMS plus telematics plus accounting plus reporting came up repeatedly. Operators want one place where notes and updates flow out automatically instead of being re-keyed into forwarder portals.
- Quoting speed is underserved.Slow quote turnaround loses business. There was strong appetite for AI-assisted quoting straight from inbound emails and PDFs.
- Growth paths differ — connectivity underwrites all of them.Some panelists are chasing direct shipper relationships, some are expanding through licensee models, some are focused purely on efficiency. In every case, system connectivity was the enabler.
The driver app is landing
More than one operator on the panel reported unprompted, positive driver feedback on the latest mobile release — for several, a first. Drivers noticing an app in a good way is a strong signal.
Freight Visibility & End-to-End Scanning
A live, single-shipment walkthrough — pickup in Newark, linehaul to Baltimore, final delivery — showing every scan event, every handoff, and every piece tracked to a location. This was the centerpiece of the conference, and it's the clearest picture of what makes Tenet different.
Piece-level scanning, integrated with the whole operation
To our knowledge, Tenet is the only system in this space that tracks freight at the piece level and keeps that tracking wired into dispatch, linehaul, warehouse, and billing — instead of scanning living in a separate silo. Every piece carries its own logistical track from the driver's first touch at pickup all the way to the consignee.
Handling units, not just shipments
A four-piece shipment is a four-handling-unit shipment. Each unit gets its own scan and its own on-hand state — so you can partially receive, verify a load unit by unit, and catch a short-shipment the moment it happens instead of at delivery.
Fully received 4 / 4 ON HAND
All four handling units scanned in. The order is fully on-hand and clear to plan onto an outbound linehaul.
Short received 2 / 4 · EXCEPTION
Only two units scanned. The order is partially on-hand and flagged — the dispatcher sees the gap before it becomes a delivery problem, not after.
Scan to a location
Every storage event is tied to a specific dock or warehouse location — freight is "on hand at Newark," then "on hand at Baltimore," not just a generic status. No more three-times-a-day dock walks to find where something is.
Plan before it's on hand
Linehaul dispatch shows any freight that needs to leave a terminal — even before pickup. You can pencil freight onto a run early, then watch the dock execution firm it up. You can also pre-plan the delivery for freight you haven't picked up yet.
Know if it fits
Runs read the assigned vehicle's cube and weight capacity and show live utilization as jobs go on. Running light? Consolidate. Bulking out? See it before you're at the dock door — using dimensions instead of guesswork.
Verify every unit onto the truck
At load-out, each handling unit is scanned onto the truck. Miss one and scanning warns the dock worker in the moment; the linehaul dispatcher monitors what's loaded from the web. The goal: every piece accounted for on hand and on the outbound plan.
Driver and dock, same app
Native app with real notifications. Permissions decide whether a user drives, works the dock, or both — no second install, no separate driver portal. New hires are productive in minutes.
Capture that bills faster
Auto-cropping turns a phone photo into a clean PDF; capture rules can be set per customer. The point: as soon as service is proven, the job is ready to invoice — shrinking the gap between doing the work and getting paid.
Q&A from the roomtap to expand ›
Cartage Pain Points, Connectivity & How Tenet Solves Them
The session that spoke most directly to the panel's number-one issue: getting clean data to and from forwarders — and, increasingly, between operators themselves.
Real-time beats the file cabinet
EDI is a mailbox — messages wait until someone checks, and lag means manual re-entry. With EDI in place, roughly 30% of orders still get keyed by hand. On a real-time API connection, that drops to about 2–3%, with built-in error visibility so a broken link doesn't stay invisible until something breaks.
Scale makes forwarders build
When a high share of a forwarder's agents run on one platform, it's worth their limited IT time to build a proper connection. That's how Tenet keeps turning EDI relationships into cleaner API ones — and customer advocacy directly accelerates it.
Tenet-to-Tenet connections
One of the most-discussed items on the roadmap: letting one Tenet customer request a data-sharing relationship with another Tenet customer. For agent networks, interline partners, and operators who run a lot of freight to and from other carriers, this means a seamless transfer between two operators on the same platform — expanding territory and network reach without buying more assets or rebuilding a connection every time. It's a direct answer to the "duplicate entry across partners" pain the panel raised.
Direct-to-shipper connectivity
Beyond forwarders, Tenet is willing to connect directly into shipper TMS platforms via API/EDI. For operators chasing direct shipper relationships, that removes the connectivity blocker that quietly loses loads — the deep integration that keeps freight flowing to you instead of getting auto-routed elsewhere.
QuickBooks Online, both ways
Fully bidirectional — invoices and payments sync in both directions, a real upgrade over the old one-way desktop integration. Motive and Samsara telematics are supported today.
Storage invoicing
Invoice ongoing storage independent of a transport order, with per-size / weight / day granularity and free-day exceptions — already live.
Pack / unpack support
Mobile-driven tracking of repackaging — splitting a pallet into boxes, container and master-bill-style consolidation — so the system reflects how freight is actually handled.
Q&A from the roomtap to expand ›
Product Roadmap & What's New
A tour of what shipped in the last twelve months and where the platform is headed — turning the scan and dispatch data you already generate into decision-ready dashboards and automated alerts.
AI document ingestion
Rebuilt as AI-based and already on for all customers — reportedly 94–97% accurate out of the box (up from the old form-editor's ~60%), learns from corrections, and splits multi-page, multi-document PDFs into individual orders automatically.
Truck load planning
Uses freight dimensions to show what fits on a truck before it's loaded, for warehouse, linehaul, and P&D — with 3D visual load planning extending to P&D.
Profitability & cost-center dashboards
Live per-terminal and per-customer profitability pulled automatically from system data — the "am I making or losing money" view without hours of spreadsheets. Breakable out by station or terminal.
Per-customer KPI scorecards
Live dashboards that mirror a forwarder's own scorecard, so customers see their numbers in real time instead of waiting on delayed internal reporting.
New notification engine
Subscribe to specific events and set staged alerts — an internal warning before a service miss, a forwarder-facing alert closer to the deadline — including missed-POD prompts folded right into the dispatch view.
Redesigned e-signature
Automatically detects and places the signature field — no manual zoom or draw — with a tamper-resistant device timestamp for system-of-record integrity.
API / EDI health visibility
A new module shows live status of API and EDI connections — message history and latency — so connectivity issues are visible instead of surfacing only when something downstream breaks.
Q&A from the roomtap to expand ›
Town Meeting — Open Forum
A free-flowing Q&A where the room brought requests and edge cases straight to the product team, and each got triaged live: near-term, needs definition, or a bigger tradeoff to talk through.
GPS on delivery photos
Location and timestamp watermarking directly on delivery photos was treated as an easy win — with stored GPS available for claims and theft disputes going back weeks.
Multi-stage delivery notifications
SMS at multiple intervals rather than a single "you're next," plus a "please call this customer" workflow that prompts and logs a live call for high-touch deliveries like medical equipment.
Accessorial automation with approvals
Auto-flag known-required accessorials (a lift gate at an address that always needs one) paired with an approval/notification step — automation that surfaces cost before dispatch without blind auto-charging.
AI email & quote handling
An AI assistant for repetitive quote inboxes and routine status/POD/charge inquiries, building on the rebuilt document ingestion — a direct response to how much quoting speed drives conversion.
Drayage & container support
Container and chassis tracking, deconsolidation work orders, and reference tracking exist today; deeper customs integration and multi-date container edge cases are being defined with customer input.
Certification underway
Work toward SOC 2 / ISO certification is in progress, alongside strengthened authentication and access controls across the platform.
What to Expect When Onboarding to Tenet
The practical mechanics of moving from Crown to Tenet — grounded by a peer customer who shared their own migration as a reference point. The through-line: the process has matured a lot, and most of the timeline is in the customer's hands, not ours.
We’re happy where we’re at. We’re excited about where we’re going, especially with this company that has been accountable at every step of the way… to have another company step up to the plate — I think we got both here, the right company and the right people.
Sandbox first
Request a demo login, walk through training, explore self-paced in a sandbox, then a follow-up call before formal migration planning begins. Hands-on operators — not just managers — should be in early so they become internal champions.
Near one-to-one migration
With team members from Crown who know exactly how Crown's tables map into Tenet, migrations are now near-complete automatic copies — quotes, tariffs, driver logins, settlements — instead of the manual tariff audits early migrations required.
EDI readiness
EDI is the real bottleneck, and most of that depends on customer readiness. Tenet pre-configures each forwarder's EDI from your existing Crown setup, so forwarders typically just swap a login or URL rather than rebuild.
Date-based cutover
Cutover is a clean switch, not a gradual bleed — whatever is open, invoiced, or in progress in Crown carries over as-is, and operations continue uninterrupted. Incoming EDI is mirrored into the sandbox in advance so the system looks populated before you flip.
Your Tenet environment is already provisioned
Every Crown conference attendee has a parallel Tenet environment with tariffs and configs already copied over, plus 100+ one-page reference documents — so teams can practice processing real orders in Tenet well before any cutover. Best time to migrate: before your peak season, planned around your own business cycle.
Q&A from the roomtap to expand ›
Breakout Sessions
Smaller, hands-on deep dives so teams could get into the parts of the system they run every day.
Getting the most from your system
Practical CFM/CE tips, tricks, and Q&A for existing users.
Dispatching, driver app & warehousing
Hands-on deep dive for operations and dispatch teams.
Linehaul & scanning
For teams running multi-stop, cross-dock, or linehaul networks — the operational core of the end-to-end scanning demo.
Accounting
Billing, invoicing, and driver settlements, in depth.
Integrations & Recent Releases
A snapshot of forwarder connectivity plus the latest platform release, V129.
Forwarder API integrations LIVE
In progress BUILDING
Combined forwarder connectivity now exceeds 70+ integrations across the network.
- AI document ingestion LIVE · ALL CUSTOMERS
Rebuilt AI-based ingestion at 94–97% accuracy; multi-page / multi-document PDF splitting into individual orders.
- QuickBooks Online LIVE
Fully bidirectional invoice and payment sync.
- Storage invoicing LIVE
Bill storage independent of a transport order, per size / weight / day, with free-day exceptions.
- 3D load planning → P&D LIVE
Dimension-based load planning extended from linehaul to P&D.
- Notification engine ~ OCTOBER
Event-based subscriptions and staged, granular alerts, including dispatch-embedded POD warnings.
- Automatic SMS appointment scheduling COMING
Customer replies yes / no / reschedule; free-text notes under consideration.
- Bulk remittance matching COMING SOON
Faster manual entry first, then automated remittance-document reading and matching.
Latest release — Tenet TMS V129
Major additions across billing, orders, linehaul dispatch, and the mobile app. Highlights below.
Smarter rating controls
Max rate cap is now fully all-inclusive (fuel no longer stacks past the cap), percentage-based accessorials with zone-group scoping, an optional single consolidated charge for P&D and Linehaul, and accurate invoice "Sent" status across email and EDI.
Faster order handling
Filter Add-from-Inventory by customer and terminal, jump straight to Packing from any order, and capture the signature as its own dedicated step in the delivery flow.
A cleaner board
HAWB search now spans the whole board including pre-dispatch, service-date changes apply instantly in place, lane totals show weight and piece count, and departed/delivered manifests drop out of the default view.
Tighter field workflow
Delivery can't be completed before pickup on the same route, loading no longer auto-departs a manifest, Work Orders show ETD/ETA and filter LH vs P&D, packing runs on mobile, order numbers show on stops, and photos auto-convert to PDF.
New & upgraded links
New API integrations for GLB, Next Gen (CUDA), and Tasmanian; BTX, Team Worldwide, and Wayfair upgraded from EDI to direct API.
Resolved this release
Attempted-then-delivered stops no longer revert to Created, and Archive Recovery Terminal buttons no longer get stuck after dismissing the confirmation modal.
Earlier releases
Tap any release to see its highlights.
V128 · August 2026Billing groups, warehouse audit & terminals ›
More billing control
Service & accessorial groups for customers, an expired-tariff indicator on orders, multi-invoice search, and overage rates to four decimal places.
Easier lookups
Container and receipt reference numbers are now searchable, and OFD (out-for-delivery) status appears in the inventory report.
Audit from the floor
Full warehouse inventory audit mode on mobile, and the reweigh checkbox auto-checks from mobile updates.
Recovery & alerts
Archive Recovery terminals, plus appointment date-changed notifications sent via SMS.
Resolved this release
Manual order refusal now updates the status in the UI immediately.
V127 · August 7, 2026ZIP auto-accessorials, receipts & Delta mode ›
Faster charging
Auto-accessorials based on ZIP code, and a faster Apply Payment screen.
Receive without an order
Filter inventory by customer, track receipt records at the piece level, and take in package receipts — freight received without an order, fully manageable in Packing.
Delta mode
New Delta mode on mobile for loading and inbound.
More flexibility
Out-of-Inventory orders can be added to linehaul manifests, and customers see an itemized charge breakdown in the portal.
Resolved this release
Service-level changes no longer alter stop types or clear addresses, EDI/API orders appear in All Orders after acceptance, and cancelled orders are excluded from delivery notifications.
This release also shipped product training guides (Packages, Receipts, Mobile) on the Tenet-OS Guides site.
V126 · July 2026Billing review, piece management & scale ›
Smoother review
Search payments by order reference, and navigate between documents in Billing Review without leaving the view.
Piece management
Delete pieces from warehouse inventory, pack and unpack pieces, and archive warehouse users to free up phone numbers.
Faster at scale
Queued scan processing is faster under heavy volume.
Resolved this release
Pieces created correctly when converting a quote, accurate invoice Sent status, finalized invoices stay in the Finalized tab, and high-piece-count orders save reliably.
V125 · July 2026Settlements, dwell-time alerts & barcodes ›
Settlements & payments
Driver settlement export to Excel/CSV, group payments by HAWB, custom messages on dunning notices, and a Payment Journal showing applied amount and remaining balance.
Consistent handling
Palletize / individualize settings now apply to EDI, API, and email orders — not just manual ones.
Dock visibility
Dwell-time alerts for freight sitting too long on the dock, damage documentation on unalerted freight, and clearer piece-level notes.
Manifest barcodes
MAWB and HAWB barcodes are now printed on the manifest.
Resolved this release
Recurring routes restored, Unassigned Stops filters corrected, multi-field route updates keep the driver assigned, and duplicate API/EDI orders are prevented.
