Growing freight volumes may be welcome news for brokers, third-party logistics (3PL) operations and carriers, but with the driver shortage holding back industry expansion, finding freight carrying capacity remains an ever present and larger challenge.

"Freight volumes are growing nicely on a year-over-year basis for most trucking sectors as economic growth remains solid," said Bob Costello, chief economist at American Trucking Associations during the annual ATA Management Conference & Exhibition. "However, the industry is having a difficult time adding trucks due to the driver shortage, which is as bad as ever and is expected to get worse in the near term."

Finding capacity to meet shipper needs requires a combination of tools to gather and manage information, along with an understanding of the market at any given point in time. Expertise in costs, the freight transportation process, and the ebb and flow of capacity based on economic and seasonal trends are valuable. It's also essential for freight brokers and 3PLs to know the transportation spending plans of shippers to be able to gauge their respective buying power for transportation services.

Data on carrier management and operational practices is invaluable. Fundamental information should include fleet sizes, equipment types, and tractor-trailer ratios. As a further gauge of availability, knowledge of the amount of equipment that is dedicated to long haul, contract, and regional operations can be very helpful. Equally important for freight brokers and 3PLs, is a relationship with carriers that shares advance knowledge of freight needs. This not only helps address capacity requirements, it can also help carriers eliminate costly empty miles.

Armed with this data, brokers and 3PLs can make the most effective decisions and capture equipment before it is assigned elsewhere during times of capacity shortage. As a starting point, performing a comprehensive review of the systems already in place will help ensure the ability to take advantage of every opportunity to find and secure capacity. This includes access to truckload and LTL, intermodal, and freight handling and consolidation service offerings.

Successful freight brokerages and 3PLs understand that they require information management solutions that provide the ability to rapidly add new customers and enter loads using a pre-configured workflow process, and quickly locate capacity for their clients by using a variety of internal and external sources, including both public and private load boards.

If finding trucks to cover loads is the first challenge for brokers, 3PLs and shippers; making sure they're finding the best available carrier at the best available rate runs a close second. Effective systems deliver access to all known negotiated rates with carriers. They do so by providing real-time access to current and historical rate data based on what was paid in the past and what others in the industry now pay for similar loads on similar lanes.

While these solutions deliver information that helps ensure rates that provide acceptable margins, there is also the challenge of making sure each carrier meets the shipper's requirements. Access to information that verifies the credentials of every carrier prior to offering a load is critical. This should include insurance coverage, credentials, and safety ratings.

Solutions should allow users to easily and accurately manage the vast amount of information that is shared in a successful relationship between a broker, 3PL, shipper, and carrier. This is especially true in operations that handle large volumes of freight. Lost information or miscommunication that results in dissatisfied customers is simply not acceptable.

Robust data warehouse capabilities that gather and maintain transactional and user interaction data and make these available for analytics applications are essential. These systems must also facilitate collaboration using the methods preferred by each carrier and shipper, including EDI, email, or web portals.

Finding available capacity for shippers is just part of the solution that makes top- producing brokers and 3PLs more successful. The real keys are tools that gather and seamlessly integrate and manage data and provide visibility into the information that can be used to make smarter, more effective decisions. Here are five tips to successfully secure carrier capacity:

1. Understand the freight transportation process and shipper/customer capacity needs based on economic trends and transportation spending plans.

2. Facilitate collaboration using methods preferred by all parties.

3. Have information gathering and management tools that include a workflow process for adding new customers, entering loads, and accessing rates to ensure acceptable margins.

4. Maintain data for analytics applications and information on carrier management and operational practices to gauge capacity availability and verify carrier credentials.

5. Routinely perform a review of the current systems and their effectiveness in helping you take advantage of every opportunity to locate capacity.

Hope Federer is the Vertical Lead for Brokers at MercuryGate International. With over 14 years of transportation experience, she leads technology implementation, post-implementation customer support, and works with product development to drive product enhancements. She has held a variety of senior management positions in the areas of transportation management, corporate and systems education, strategic carrier procurement, and corporate pricing.

Recently, the strangest thing has happened. Two American Nobel Prize-winning economists (Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman) have called for the United States to stop negotiating new trade agreements. Specifically, they have called for a halt to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks and urged Congress not to give the president a mandate for these and other trade negotiations by enacting new Trade Promotion Authority.

Their primary stated reason for taking an anti-trade agreement position is that expanding trade leads to domestic job loss. Of course, more jobs by far are lost to productivity-enhancing technological breakthroughs. Yet these economists have not called for the removal of ATMs so that more bank tellers can be hired. They have decided, as King Canute must have when he found that he could not command the tide, that it would be foolhardy to resist technological change. Turning the clock back on either technology or trade is neither possible nor desirable. Any attempt to do so will only slow economic growth and limit human potential.

Both technological progress and trade agreements change the status quo. And that requires adjustment. This is where policy attention should be directed, because the United States is not as advanced as it should be in training a workforce that can continuously adapt to the need for new skills. Failure to meet this need will only assure that fewer new jobs will be created in the United States in the future. Curtailing attempts to remove foreign barriers to trade is simply focusing on the wrong target.

There is another major fault in the anti-trade position: It is founded on a basic misunderstanding of what the TPP and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks are about. Yes, some longstanding areas of U.S. protection would be removed, but the U.S. market is already open with few exceptions and the areas that are still protected are not what any economist or policymaker would hold out to be the future of the American economy. U.S. trade negotiations are largely about providing new opportunities for business and workers through better international rules.

The following are a few examples of what up-to-date trade agreements could do:

Freedom for cross-border data flows. The major trade agreements that are in existence today were negotiated before the Internet became essential to global commerce. Being able to employ the Internet is the way small and medium enterprises, as well as large multinational companies, can gain access to global markets. But this technology is threatened with new protectionism - such as requiring servers to be located domestically.

Free trade in environmental goods and services. Likewise, existing trade agreements were negotiated before climate change became a dominant concern for policymakers in all major trading countries. Leaving these items subject to import barriers runs counter to this new policy imperative.

Disciplines on state-owned enterprises. In many countries, government enterprises go beyond the provision of needed public services and engage in business. They should then act in accordance with commercial considerations rather than becoming a means for their government owners to skirt international rules.

Opening markets for services. With the advent of the Internet, it is far more practical to supply services across international boundaries. While there is a code for services trade under the World Trade Organization, it applies to far too little of the spectrum of services that can be internationally traded. Liberalization in this area can create millions of jobs in the United States alone, and a multiple of that globally.

Curbing the unnecessary trade-restricting effects of product standards. Tariffs can slow trade, but product standards can prevent it altogether. Where the objectives are the same - e.g., safety of automobiles - there should be a mutual interest in adopting standards that are compatible rather than conflicting.

Honoring intellectual property rights. Innovation requires that benefits accrue to those who engage in intensive R&D efforts and bring new products to the marketplace. Trade secrets, as well as patents and copyrights, should be protected. Economic growth and global welfare require it.

Each of these initiatives, and the other subjects addressed by TPP and TTIP will create new opportunities for business and for employment. U.S. objectives in these negotiations are far from secret, and they deserve support. Far from calling a halt to current trade talks, the progress should be accelerated and the results should be given the means to achieve formal congressional input and approval.

Wolff serves as chairman of the National Foreign Trade Council and practices law at the firm of McKenna, Long and Aldridge. He was a senior trade official in the Carter and Ford administrations.