TMS strategy, supply chain visibility, and vendor management for $10M to $100M logistics operators. $5,499/mo advisory, $9,499/mo full.
- Audit
- Architect
- Scale
monthly retainer
Who this is for
Owner or COO at a $10M to $100M logistics or 3PL operation where the TMS is aging, supply chain visibility is limited, and every technology decision lands on a desk that already has too much on it.
The pain today
- TMS is aging and replacement feels high-risk mid-operation
- Customer-facing tracking is manual, delayed, or just absent
- ELD, accounting, EDI, and TMS don't talk to each other cleanly
- Technology decisions are reactive rather than planned
- A full-time VP of Technology isn't justified at current scale
The outcome you get
- Fractional CTO at $5,499 to $9,499/mo, no full-time overhead
- TMS strategy: upgrade, replace, or build a custom data layer
- Supply chain visibility your customers can actually use
- Vendor consolidation with clean integration across your stack
- A technology roadmap tied to revenue and exit readiness
What a logistics CTO actually works on
Fractional CTO for logistics work concentrates in four areas. TMS — whether to upgrade the current system, replace it entirely, or build a custom layer on top without disrupting live operations. Visibility — real-time shipment tracking, ETA notifications, driver location, and self-service customer portals. Integrations — connecting ELD, EDI, accounting, and specialty freight partners into one coherent data flow. And data — unified reporting across shipments, customers, drivers, and profitability that doesn't require exporting three spreadsheets first.
Most operators I talk to have all four problems running at once. The TMS replacement conversation stalls because nobody wants to touch it during peak season. Visibility gets deprioritized because there's no clear owner. Integrations are held together with manual workarounds. The difference a fractional CTO makes is having someone whose only job is to move these things forward — not firefighting and not buried in day-to-day IT tickets.
Fractional CTO at $5,499 to $9,499/mo, no full-time overhead
TMS strategy: upgrade, replace, or layer
The TMS decision is the highest-stakes call in mid-market logistics technology. Get it wrong and you're looking at 18 months of disruption; get it right and operations and customer experience both improve at once.
I evaluate three paths. Upgrading the current system — most operators underuse what they already have, and a configuration and integration push often buys 2 to 3 years before a real replacement is warranted. Replacing with a modern platform — Turvo, Rose Rocket, Cargowise, MercuryGate, McLeod — evaluated on operational fit, integration capability, pricing, and migration risk for your specific freight mix. Building a custom data and visibility layer on top of a legacy TMS — the right answer when the core dispatch and billing logic still works but the customer-facing and reporting layers need rebuilding.
For operators under $50M in revenue, full TMS replacement is usually harder to justify than a layer-and-extend approach. I help you make that call with a clear-eyed view of cost, risk, and business impact rather than a vendor sales deck.
40+: Payment providers integrated.
Supply chain visibility as a competitive edge
Shippers are comparing visibility experiences now the way they compared price five years ago. Real-time tracking, proactive delay alerts, self-service status portals — these shifted from differentiators to baseline expectations faster than most mid-market operators adapted.
Delivering real visibility requires unified data across TMS, ELD, and customer communication systems. That's an integration problem before it's a product problem. At bolttech, I led integration work spanning 40+ payment providers across Asia and Europe — 99.9% platform uptime, zero post-launch critical bugs. The discipline of making disparate systems share data reliably is the same whether you're connecting payment rails or connecting a TMS to a customer portal.
For 3PLs competing on service rather than pure price, a well-built visibility layer is the kind of infrastructure that justifies rate premiums and keeps accounts from going to re-bid.
Vendor consolidation and stack audit
The typical mid-market logistics operator runs 8 to 12 distinct software tools: TMS, ELD, accounting, CRM, document management, EDI gateway, communication platform, driver-facing app, and a handful of specialty freight integrations. Some of these tools overlap. Few of them talk to each other natively.
A stack audit maps what you actually have, where the redundancies are, and where integrations are failing or missing. The output is a consolidation plan: which tools to retire, which platforms have integration capability worth building on, and where best-of-breed specialists are worth keeping. Operators moving toward an acquisition or outside investment benefit from this in a second way — a clean, documented technology stack materially reduces due diligence friction and often comes up as a valuation factor in logistics M&A.
EDI, ELD, and freight integrations
EDI and ELD come up in almost every logistics engagement I take on. For EDI: transaction sets 210, 214, 204, 997, and 990 cover the core freight workflows. Operators with five or more trading partners typically benefit from a dedicated EDI gateway — Kleinschmidt and SPS Commerce are both solid — rather than managing individual direct connections. For operators just starting with EDI, direct integrations are feasible and lower-overhead.
ELD compliance stays in the ELD system. My work reads ELD data for visibility dashboards and operational reporting without touching the compliance-critical functions. Samsara, Motive, and Geotab all have documented APIs and behave predictably.
Driver-facing technology is its own design constraint. Variable connectivity, small screens, and minimal training time mean that a mobile-first web app handles most driver workflows better than a native app. Native is worth the complexity when offline capability or device hardware access actually matters.
Engagement model and when full-time makes sense
CTO Advisory at $5,499/mo covers one to two days per week: strategic direction, vendor decisions, technology roadmap, and senior technical input on hiring. Fractional CTO at $9,499/mo adds three days per week and a deeper operating role — team oversight, architecture decisions, and hands-on integration work where needed. Both engagements carry a 14-day money-back guarantee and cancel-anytime terms.
For logistics operators at $100M or above with multi-site complexity and a growing IT team, a full-time VP of Technology often makes more sense. The fractional model works best when strategic technology leadership is the gap, not operational IT management. When that line shifts, I help structure the transition and can advise on the hire.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Unified payment orchestration across Asia and Europe
Delivered the payment orchestration platform at bolttech, a $1B+ unicorn, with 40+ integrations across multiple regions.
Read the case studyFrequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
In practice: reviewing TMS replacement options, evaluating vendor proposals, unblocking integration work that's stalled, and giving your ops and sales leadership a technical perspective on product decisions. The engagement is part strategy and part execution oversight. I'm not managing help-desk tickets — I'm working on the decisions that move the business forward. Most customers get a weekly sync plus async availability for anything time-sensitive.
Yes. I evaluate Cargowise, MercuryGate, Turvo, McLeod, Rose Rocket, Magaya, and Aljex based on operational fit, integration capability, freight type, and migration complexity. A TMS replacement for a mid-market operator typically runs 6 to 12 months end-to-end. I manage the vendor selection process, protect the operation's interests during contract negotiation, and oversee the transition so live operations aren't disrupted.
Most logistics customers engage for 12 to 24 months. The natural endpoint is usually a completed platform transition, a visibility build-out, or the business reaching a scale where a full-time technology leader is justified. Some customers continue beyond that on a lighter advisory cadence. There's no minimum term — the 14-day guarantee and cancel-anytime policy mean you're not locked in.
A full-time VP of Technology at a $30M logistics company typically costs $180K to $250K in total comp, plus recruiting time and ramp. A fractional CTO engagement at $5,499 to $9,499/mo runs $54K to $102K per year. For operators that need strategic technology leadership but not a full-time operational IT manager, the fractional model covers the real gap at roughly a third of the cost.
Yes. Transaction sets 210, 214, 204, 997, and 990 cover standard freight EDI workflows. For operators with five or more trading partners, I recommend a dedicated EDI gateway — Kleinschmidt and SPS Commerce are both reliable options. For operators starting with EDI, direct integrations are workable and lower-overhead. I manage the integration strategy and oversee the technical implementation.
It comes up more than most operators expect. In logistics M&A, acquirers and PE buyers look at whether the TMS and integrations are documented, whether there's vendor lock-in risk, and whether the tech can scale without a full rebuild. A well-documented, consolidated stack reduces due diligence friction. I've seen platform complexity used as a valuation haircut in deals where the buyer's integration team flagged it.