Top 10 Pain Points Forwarders Still Struggle With in 2025

🎉 Tradlinx 10×10 Series
To celebrate 10 years of helping forwarders thrive, we’re unpacking 10 of the biggest shifts in global freight—one list at a time.

“It’s 2025. Why are we still chasing shipment updates over email?”

For many freight forwarders, daily operations still feel like a tangle of spreadsheets, disconnected tools, and siloed updates. Despite industry-wide digitization, core pain points continue to drag down teams — especially in SMB and mid-market firms.

Here are 10 problems we keep seeing — and what ops-first teams are doing that’s actually working.

1. Manual Updates Still Swallow Hours

The problem: Teams are still rekeying info from emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets across systems.

Why it’s still happening: Because true integrations are rare, and most visibility tools only solve half the problem.

Smarter approach: Use BL-based tracking so you’re not updating 10 containers separately. Forwarders we work with cut email updates by 60% just from switching to per-BL status feeds and milestone alerts.

2. Tracking Still Lives in Someone’s Inbox

The problem: Customers call asking where their cargo is, and someone has to log into three portals and hit refresh.

Why it’s still happening: Because most teams still lean on carrier updates or stitched-together Excel trackers.

Smarter approach: Forwarders are building branded, shared views with real-time ETA updates that reduce status chases. No dev work, no new login for the customer.

3. Ops and Finance Still Don’t Talk

The problem: Quotes, charges, invoices — they all live in different tools (or heads).

Why it’s still happening: Because most systems weren’t designed to reflect how freight actually flows.

Smarter approach: Link shipment events directly to invoicing checkpoints. Forwarders using per-BL costing reduce disputes and catch underbilling early.

4. Too Many Systems, Not Enough Sync

The problem: Forwarders are juggling 5–7 tools across quoting, booking, tracking, CRM, and accounting.

Why it’s still happening: Because most teams added new software over the years without any real integration strategy.

Smarter approach: Platformize the core stack — TMS, visibility, document control — in one place. Less switching = fewer dropped balls.

5. No One Trusts the ETA

The problem: You give one ETA to the customer, a different one to your team, and both turn out wrong.

Why it’s still happening: Because most ETAs come from static carrier feeds or generic models that don’t reflect local context.

Smarter approach: Use predictive ETAs blended with AIS and port congestion data. Bonus if they update automatically on your client view.

6. Customer Updates Are Still Manual

The problem: You send 12 shipment updates on Friday, and 6 more on Monday morning.

Why it’s still happening: Because no one set up milestone-triggered alerts or automated views — or worse, clients don’t want “another login.”

Smarter approach: Milestone-triggered updates sent by email, SMS, or embedded website plugin. Teams using this saw a 40% drop in inbound “where’s my shipment?” calls—and clients love having updates without needing to log in.

7. Carrier Info Is Still a Black Box

The problem: Forwarders often receive delayed or incomplete shipment updates from carriers — and the customer is waiting for you.

Why it’s still happening: Because a huge chunk of the industry still runs on EDI or inconsistent update cycles.

Smarter approach: Verify data using BL-based visibility plus AIS tracking. If a carrier doesn’t share info, at least the vessel will.

8. Ops Teams Are Still the Default IT Department

The problem: Want to onboard a tool? Good luck — ops has to figure it out themselves.

Why it’s still happening: Because most forwarders don’t have in-house devs, and the SaaS vendor’s “support” is a help doc.

Smarter approach: Use tools with operator-designed workflows and live support. Better if your platform actually handles implementation with you.

9. You’re Still Paying for Features You Don’t Use

The problem: Locked into 3-year contracts with tools that never got off the ground? You’re not alone.

Why it’s still happening: Because most pricing models are built for vendors, not users.

Smarter approach: Forwarders are moving to per-BL pricing, pay-as-you-go, and modular setups. If a platform isn’t earning its keep monthly, it’s not worth keeping yearly.

10. Everyone Knows the Problems. No One Wants to Rip It All Out

The problem: The team is stuck — but no one wants to start from scratch.

Why it’s still happening: Because the idea of change sounds worse than the pain you already know.

Smarter approach: Forwarders succeeding in 2025 didn’t do “transformation.” They just fixed the worst part first — one high-friction workflow at a time.

Negotiate modular SaaS contracts where features are billed monthly based on use — not locked bundles.
Test freemium or pay-as-you-grow tools (e.g., Truckercloud, Tradlinx Track On-Site) before scaling across operations.

🛠️ Real Fixes. Real Ops.

Tradlinx is built by professionals who lived and breathed these problems for over a decade — not consultants, not theorists. That’s why our platform focuses on the parts that actually move the needle:

Reliable BL-based visibility
Modular features you can turn on or off
Per-BL pricing that scales with you
White-glove support from onboarding to ops

Want to see what ops-first tech actually looks like in action?

Why overpay for visibility? TRADLINX saves you 40% with transparent per–Master B/L pricing. Get 99% accuracy, 12 updates daily, and 80% ETA accuracy improvements, trusted by 83,000+ logistics teams and global leaders like Samsung and LG Chem.