The CRM for Logistics Companies and Freight Sales Teams

Why logistics companies need a CRM

Logistics companies juggle many shipper relationships, carrier negotiations, rate quotes, and service-level agreements at once. When that information lives in spreadsheets, email threads, and the heads of individual sales reps, revenue falls through the cracks.

Whether you run a freight brokerage, a trucking company, a 3PL warehouse, or a last-mile delivery service, these problems are familiar:

• Customer data is scattered: Shipper details in email, rate agreements in spreadsheets, service notes in someone's notebook. When a key account manager is out, nobody knows the full picture.
• Quotes go quiet: A potential shipper requested a rate quote last week and nobody followed up. In logistics, margins are too thin to waste opportunities.
• No visibility into the sales pipeline: How many RFPs are outstanding? Which accounts are up for renewal? Without a logistics CRM, leadership is guessing.
• Carrier relationships are unmanaged: You work with dozens of carriers but have no structured record of equipment, lanes, or pricing history. When a lane needs coverage, it is a scramble.
• Account retention is reactive: You find out a client is unhappy when they leave. There is no structured view of which accounts nobody has talked to lately.
• Onboarding sales reps is slow: Shipper preferences, lane history, and rate benchmarks are not documented anywhere.

A CRM for logistics companies gives you the structure to follow up on every quote, keep account history in one place, and onboard new team members faster.

How Customermates works as a logistics CRM

Customermates is a B2B relationship CRM with contacts, organizations, deals, services, and tasks, typed custom fields, and table and kanban views. It is not a TMS: it does not plan loads, dispatch carriers, track shipments, or invoice freight. It sits next to your TMS for the sales and account side.

Shipper and carrier relationship management

Every shipper, carrier, and partner gets a record in your contact management system with contact details, notes, activity history, and linked deals. Custom fields hold rate agreement references, lane preferences, and service requirements. When your rep calls a shipper, past notes, quotes, and linked conversations are on one screen.

For carriers, add custom fields such as region, equipment type, lanes covered, and insurance expiry date. When you need to cover a lane, filter your carriers by region or equipment type. Keep insurance certificates and rate sheets in your file storage and store the link on the record, since records do not hold file attachments.

Quote management and sales pipeline

Track every opportunity from initial outreach to signed contract in your sales pipeline. Whether you are pursuing a new freight lane, responding to an RFP, or negotiating a 3PL agreement, the kanban board shows where each deal stands.

The deal stage is one configurable column, so the stages can match your logistics sales process: Prospecting, Initial Contact, Quote Sent, Negotiation, Contract Signed, Active Account. Drag deals between stages, filter by lane type or annual value, and give each stage a probability for weighted pipeline totals. To separate freight sales from warehousing deals, add a single-select field and save a view for each. A saved view of deals in Quote Sent, sorted by last update, shows which quotes need a follow-up call. Customermates does not create quote documents; you send the quote from your TMS or quoting tool and track it here.

Follow-up through your own automation

Customermates has no built-in workflow builder and no reminders. Follow-up automation runs through interfaces you control, described under workflow automation:

• Routines on Customermates Cloud: the Mate assistant runs a saved prompt on a schedule or on a CRM event, for example every Monday listing quotes that have not moved for five days and drafting a follow-up for each. Starter includes 1 routine per user and Pro includes 5.
• Webhooks and REST: send record changes to your own systems, or let your website form tool create a deal through the REST API.
• n8n, operated separately: connect through the Customermates community node, REST, or webhooks, for example to create a follow-up task when a carrier's insurance expiry date is near, or to sync accounts with your TMS.

AI agents that operate your logistics CRM

External AI clients such as Claude or ChatGPT connect through MCP with 50 tools, so an AI agent can read and write your CRM directly and do the data entry reps avoid: moving deals through stages, updating carrier records, and logging quote follow-ups. You choose and pay for the AI client. Ask an agent to draft follow-up emails after calls, summarize account history before a shipper meeting, or list accounts without recent activity. On Customermates Cloud, the built-in Mate assistant works inside the app, drafts replies in the unified inbox on Pro, and asks for your confirmation before it sends a message or deletes anything.

Custom fields for logistics data

Every logistics operation is different. Add typed custom fields for your business: freight mode (FTL, LTL, intermodal, ocean, air), annual shipping volume, lane preferences, contract type, service level, warehouse locations, equipment requirements, temperature control needs, hazmat certification, or customs brokerage status. Custom fields live directly on deal, contact, and organization records.

Service visibility for the sales team

While Customermates is a CRM, not a TMS, it can give sales a view of service. Store shipment or account references from your TMS on customer records, and log service issues as notes or tasks. When a shipper calls about a delayed load, the account manager sees the relationship history, contract terms, and recent service notes on one screen. Tracking data stays in your TMS; you can build a connection through the REST API or an n8n workflow if you want references synced.

Lane and revenue overview

Track which lanes generate the most business with custom fields on deals and dashboards. Group deals by lane, freight mode, or owner to see where your pipeline value sits. Customermates does not optimize routes or calculate lane profitability; that analysis belongs in your TMS or BI tool.

Unified inbox

On Pro and above, the unified inbox brings email (Gmail, Outlook, IMAP), LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram into the CRM, so shipper conversations, carrier negotiations, and partner discussions are linked to the right account. When a shipper you worked with two years ago messages about a new lane, the earlier conversations are there. SMS and phone calls are not channels, and the inbox is not available self-hosted.

Logistics CRM vs. generic CRM

Generic CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot are built for standard B2B sales cycles. Logistics adds multi-party relationships (shippers, carriers, brokers, consignees), lane-based pricing, seasonal volume, and relationships that span years.

Adapting a large generic CRM to logistics often takes consultants and ongoing customization. Dedicated logistics platforms such as Magaya bundle CRM with TMS and freight management features you may already have. Customermates gives you a configurable CRM for carrier and shipper records, quote tracking, and open interfaces for automation, with the flexibility of open source.

If you already have a TMS and need a CRM layer for relationship management and sales pipeline tracking, Customermates is a good fit. It connects to your existing logistics stack through REST, webhooks, and MCP instead of trying to replace it.

Pricing for logistics companies

Logistics operates on tight margins, so Customermates keeps pricing simple, billed monthly per user:

• Starter, €12 per user per month: pipeline, custom fields, views, dashboards, REST API, webhooks, and MCP for AI clients (50 tools)
• Pro, €29 per user per month: adds the unified inbox (email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram) with 1 connected account per user, linked to shippers, carriers, and brokers
• Self-hosted: run the open-source core on your own servers with no licence cost; the inbox and Mate are cloud-only
• Data protection: in the managed cloud, the application database runs in the AWS Frankfurt region; subprocessors, including US providers, are listed on the subprocessors page, and a DPA is available

If shipper and carrier conversations should live in the CRM, Pro is the plan to look at. A sales team of 5 freight brokers pays €145/month on Pro. An operations team of 20 across dispatch, sales, and account management pays €580/month.

See the full breakdown on our pricing page.

Getting started

Setting up Customermates for your logistics company:

1. Create an account: no credit card required. The first 7 days are free.
2. Bring in your records: import shippers, carriers, and deals from an Excel workbook (XLSX), one record type at a time, use the REST API, or let an AI client connected over MCP create them. There is no CSV import.
3. Set up your pipeline: define stages that match your logistics sales process: Prospecting, Quote Sent, Negotiation, Contracted, Active.
4. Add custom fields: freight modes, lanes, volumes, contract terms, equipment types, insurance expiry dates.
5. Set up follow-up: save views for open quotes and expiring carrier insurance, and on the cloud add a routine that lists them each week.
6. Invite your team: add sales reps, account managers, dispatchers, and operations staff with roles and permissions per record type.

Customermates is open source. You can export records as XLSX one record type at a time, reach them through the REST API, or self-host the core.

Frequently asked questions