Why Most Freight Software Still Runs on Spreadsheets

The American trucking industry alone generated $906 billion in revenue in 2024, moving over 11 billion tons of freight. Yet if you walk into most freight forwarding offices, you will still find someone updating a rate sheet in Excel, pasting tracking numbers into a shared Google Sheet, or emailing a PDF quote they built by hand. This is not a small business problem. It is an industry-wide condition.

A McKinsey survey found that 73% of supply chain managers rely on spreadsheets as their primary management tool. And while nearly two-thirds of logistics companies now report having a formal digital transformation strategy in place (per S&P Global's 2023 survey of 500 shippers and providers), adoption remains deeply uneven.and for most small-to-mid-sized freight forwarders, "digital transformation" still means getting a better version of the same spreadsheet.

Why Excel Became the Default

It is worth understanding why the industry got here before dismissing it. Freight is extraordinarily heterogeneous. Every shipment involves different modes, ports, carriers, commodity types, and regulatory requirements. Excel offered something early TMS platforms did not: the ability to model anything. You can build a rate card for any trade lane, in any currency, with any surcharge logic, in a spreadsheet. No software vendor required.

The other force is trust. Freight is a relationship business. For decades, the "system" was the people.the broker who knew the rates, the ops manager who tracked shipments in their head, the owner who handled collections personally. Software was viewed as a threat to that tribal knowledge, not a complement to it.

The Hidden Cost of Spreadsheet Operations

The IDC estimates that human errors from manual data entry cost US firms $435 per employee per year.and in freight, where a single digit misplaced on an HTS code or a rate calculation can mean thousands of dollars in duties or a lost quote, that number compounds quickly.

80% of logistics survey respondents say they need innovation now more than ever to improve transparency and reliability.yet many still use Excel as their primary operations tool. (Logistics Viewpoints)

Beyond the direct error cost, there is the opportunity cost. When a freight forwarder's operations team is spending hours reconciling spreadsheets, manually sending quote emails, and chasing down status updates, they are not doing the thing that actually grows the business: quoting more freight and winning more accounts.

What Replacement Actually Requires

The failure mode of most digitization attempts in freight is trying to replicate the spreadsheet in a different UI. That is not transformation.it is migration. Real replacement requires three things working together:

• A rate engine that can ingest carrier rate cards, apply surcharges automatically, and generate a compliant customer-facing quote in seconds.not minutes.
• A workflow layer that routes inquiries, triggers follow-ups, and notifies the right person at the right time without a human in the loop.
• A visibility layer that gives both the operator and the customer a real-time view of where every shipment stands, without a phone call being required.

None of these are technically difficult in 2026. What makes them hard is change management and integration with legacy carrier systems that were not designed to talk to anything modern.

The Companies Getting This Right

The freight forwarders winning new accounts today are not necessarily the ones with the best rates.they are the ones who respond fastest, look most professional, and make their clients feel in control. A clean quoting system, an automated follow-up sequence, and a client-facing tracking portal can create that impression even for a 10-person shop competing against enterprise 3PLs.

The industry will not abandon Excel overnight. But the operators who treat it as a symptom.rather than a solution.are the ones building durable businesses in a market that is becoming increasingly digital by default.