In freight brokerage, spot bidding can either sharpen your edge or grind your team down. For Leonard's Express, it was the latter. Every customer ran their own portal, their own process, their own requirements, and the team was burning hours on manual work just to stay in the game. Some opportunities were being missed entirely, and there was no way to look back at previous bids, track what had been won, or adjust rates with any real data behind the decision.
Troy Wiitanen, VP of Business Development, described the core problem:
"The main operational challenge we were trying to solve was the complexity of working so many different customer sites. What that creates is a struggle from all of our account managers to keep up with that process."
For Dana Pruitt, Business Development Manager and Leonard's primary spot bidder for 17 years, that struggle was a daily reality:
"I would have to log on to five to 10 individual websites and go through each of them individually. And then start all over and go through them again, because there are so many spot bids being put out every minute of the day. It was a chore."
Making it worse: none of those platforms offered a way to track what had been bid or won. If an account manager asked whether a load had been spot bid two days ago, the answer was simply, "I don't know."
"There was no way to go back and look at previous bids compared to today's market and adjust our rates accordingly. It was a lot of work going back and forth looking up market rates, seeing what competitors had posted, and trying to win. It was blind."
Enter Manifold.
Within weeks of going live, everything changed. The fragmented, multi-portal process was consolidated into a single platform with full visibility, tracking, and documentation built in. Dana's reaction said it all:
"The insights tab, the bids tab, the documentation is all there. Where have you been?"
Tom O'Donnell, VP of Logistics, felt the operational shift just as sharply:
"My time is basically cut in half. The amount of opportunities is just endless right now. I would say it's probably 10 to 15 times more working with Manifold."
And Dana, who had no way to compare bid volumes from the old platforms, put it this way:
"Based on what I see, I have to be bidding at least three times more than I was before. And I think our win rate is higher."
The numbers told the story:
Beyond volume, Manifold gave Leonard's something they'd never had before: the ability to make data-driven decisions. Dana now uses bid history to adjust rates day-to-day based on what's working. Regional directors keep the platform up throughout the day. And account managers have been freed from manual portal-hopping to focus on executing and meeting customer expectations.
Troy put it simply:
"The real value with Manifold is the visibility on all the freight that we hadn't been bidding on before. Now we're able to see it, track it, monitor it, evaluate it, to help us make better data-driven decisions about opportunities we most likely were missing in the past."
What made it all stick? The platform is genuinely easy to use. Dana called it "completely user friendly", and the Manifold team's responsiveness has set a new bar for what customer service looks like.
Dana described it like this:
"If I need to add a customer, or if I see a glitch, they are right on it. Within the hour, it's corrected."
Troy echoed the sentiment, noting that from the time Leonard's raised a request to the next scheduled meeting, there was already something tangible to review: a working build, not just a plan. "In my mind, that was customer service at its finest."
Tom added:
"The tech is outstanding, and the customer service and the way they respond to us in a timely manner, it just is outstanding. I would recommend them to anyone."
Today, Leonard's Express is a more efficient, more visible, and more competitive operation, and there's no going back.
"If we had to go back to life before Manifold, it would be very difficult."
Want to learn how Manifold can help your team quote smarter and win more freight? Schedule a demo today.