Rate complexity is one of freight's most persistent operational headaches. Every carrier deals with it differently - and almost always badly.
BeyondTrucks has launched RateAgents, what the company calls the industry's first generative AI-powered coding agent designed specifically to address freight rate complexity. The feature is built into the company's transportation management system and eliminates the need for carriers to rely on spreadsheets, expensive custom code, or standalone rating engines to manage their rate tables.
The Problem It Solves
Freight rate structures are legitimately complex. Fuel surcharges tied to US Department of Energy regional indexes with custom date ranges. Accessorial charges that vary by lane, weight bracket, or customer contract. Special pricing logic negotiated directly with shippers that exists only in contract language and someone's spreadsheet. Traditional TMS providers have spent decades building rating functionality, yet the gap between what carriers actually need and what software can handle has forced the industry to rely on workarounds that are expensive to build, hard to maintain, and prone to error.
RateAgents uses large language model technology to close that gap. Carriers can input contract language directly - in plain English, exactly as a shipper or carrier defines it - and the AI agent generates working rate table code within the BeyondTrucks platform. A natural language input window takes the prompt and produces functional code, no developer required.
BeyondTrucks CEO Hans Galland demonstrated the capability for Truck News, showing how carriers can input detailed contract language and receive working code that calculates fuel surcharges based on specific DOE regional indexes and custom date ranges. His framing of the moment is worth noting: freight technology has reached a point where carriers can finally get tools that fit their actual needs more completely, rather than adapting their operations to the limitations of their software.
Why This Matters for the Freight Industry
In four years of working with executives in B2B SaaS and logistics, the disconnect between what enterprise software promises and what actually runs in operations is one of the most consistent sources of friction I have seen. Rate management in trucking is a textbook example. The logic exists in someone's head, in a contract PDF, in a spreadsheet nobody updates consistently. Anything that converts that institutional knowledge into reliable, executable code without requiring a developer is a genuine operational improvement.
BeyondTrucks has been building out its AI capabilities steadily. Last year it launched a native AI route optimization tool to address load planning and dispatch efficiency. RateAgents extends that investment into the commercial layer of carrier operations - the contracts and pricing logic that determine whether a load is actually profitable. For carriers evaluating TMS platforms in 2026, the combination of route optimization and AI-generated rate management in a single native platform is a meaningful differentiator.
