Sean Freedman has always had a knack for entrepreneurship — one he was eager to put to use. After learning the transportation ropes working for a large US-based logistics company for 11 years, he knew he wanted to start his own logistics business.
But like for many entrepreneurs, financing stood in the way. After putting together his business plan, he was denied a bank loan — and even told he should open his own Subway franchise instead.
Sean wasn’t deterred, however, and eventually got the financing he needed. He combined a bank loan with all of his life savings and founded Freightzy, a single-source logistics provider — just weeks before the 2020 pandemic shut the world down.
A growing business comes with growing challenges
As a freight brokerage, the organization acts as an intermediary between companies and carriers and helps other companies focus on their businesses rather than worrying about their shipping needs.
Due to the massive demand on the supply chain during COVID, the company had to adapt fast. The company delivered 15,000 shipments in its first three years and launched Canada’s first carbon-neutral program for shippers. As of April 2023, Freightzy had offset 1.4 million pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Despite the economic impacts of the pandemic, Sean’s business thrived, even outperforming his most optimistic projections. But their processes weren’t always efficient, which impacted their ability to scale with customer demand.
Like many other Canadian small businesses, the team was making payments by printing physical checks and mailing them to their vendors. These checks would get lost, cashed twice, and sometimes duplicated — issues that wasted time and money and held back the company's growth.
And while growth was obviously welcomed by Sean and his team, it meant that the issues with making vendor payments only got bigger. Because the company was making a high number of transactions per day, there would be mistakes that went unnoticed until reconciliation at the end of the month. Their their ability to grow was impacted.
“I didn't expect us to doing the kind of numbers that we're doing so quickly,” Sean said. “It was a good problem to have, but we had issues handling the growing volume through the bank platform we were using. We tried different ways to make our payments, but all of them had their own challenges.”
That’s when they found Plooto.
The integrations and infrastructure to scale
At the core of Freightzy is their transportation management system (TMS), which serves as the mission control for shipping, tracking, and delivering their freight. It’s crucial that the payments software Freightzy uses integrates with their TMS to ensure simple and accurate record-keeping.
“We were pleasantly surprised just how seamlessly Plooto integrated with our TMS, which saves us so much time on manual payments,” Sean said. “It’s been a game-changer.”
By integrating with Freightzy’s existing accounting software as well as its TMS, Plooto enables Freightzy to make a growing number of error-free transactions every day. They save a significant amount of time with automated payments, are more efficient, and can now put accounting resources on higher value tasks.
This helps enable Freightzy to scale with demand without being held back by tedious and error-filled processes. Now, not only can they grow unhindered, but they can also serve as the rising tide for other businesses who needed their shipping needs simplified.
“We experienced tremendous growth in our first year, but we wouldn't have been able to keep up that pace without automating some of our processes,” Sean said. “Plooto saved us a lot of time that we previously spent on manual tasks — time that we now spend on scaling the business.”
