Optimal Dynamics

08/28/2026

Our own Erica Frank has been named a winner of the 2026 Women in Supply Chain Forum Award in the Trailblazers category.

This award and category, presented by Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive, honor female leaders who continue to pave the way for future women in logistics.

As our SVP of Marketing, Erica works each day to connect our highly technical optimization platform with the planners, dispatchers, and executives who make critical business decisions. She has built a library of compelling customer case studies that tell the stories of how leading carriers have used Optimal Dynamics to outperform in one of the most challenging freight markets in recent memory.

Congrats to Erica on this well-deserved honor! See the full list of 2026 winners:

https://hubs.la/Q04vGS1B0

07/28/2026

Erica Frank joined our team 2-and-a-half years ago with a long career in the trucking industry already behind her. That experience shapes everything about how she runs marketing at Optimal Dynamics.

During her time at Optimal Dynamics, Erica has built the SDR team from scratch and helped launch new solutions like Scale — the industry’s first Decision-Native Agentic System (DNAS).

Learn more about Erica in this month’s Employee Spotlight, where she shares what brought her to Optimal Dynamics, what defines the company culture, the work she’s proudest of, advice for anyone interested in joining the team, her favorite F1 team, and more.

Read the full spotlight here:

https://hubs.la/Q04r02v30

Meet Erica Frank, senior vice president of marketing at Optimal Dynamics.

07/24/2026

Some of the hardest problems in freight have nothing to do with trucks. They live in the math around which load to accept, which driver to dispatch, and which commitment to protect when everything shifts at once.

That’s the work we do at Optimal Dynamics. Our platform helps carriers make the best decisions across their networks — and our team is growing to support this mission.

We’re hiring across sales, engineering, and other groups. Here’s what our team members enjoy:

→ A remote-first environment built for deep work
→ Real ownership over the problems you take on
→ Decision science with 40+ years of research behind it
→ Work that shows up in the real world, moving actual freight

If you’re searching for a new opportunity, take a look at our open roles and apply:

https://hubs.la/Q04qFlqS0

07/23/2026

The freight market was brutal for years, but Ploger Transportation didn’t wait for conditions to improve.

Instead, they invested in AI-driven automation while the market was still down — and the results speak for themselves:

↑ 21.4% increase in load volume
↑ 14.6% improvement in revenue per mile per week
↑ 12.5% gain in revenue per truck per week

Ploger operated with the same team and the same trucks, but smarter decisions unlocked serious performance improvements.

Now that rates are climbing and capacity is tightening, carriers who made that investment are positioned to capture even more. The ones still running on manual planning and gut feel are playing catch-up.

The upcycle is here. Are you set up to make the most of it?

Learn more about Ploger’s success:

https://hubs.la/Q04qvqf30

07/22/2026

Hear from two logistics leaders on how to get the most out of AI right now in the trucking industry.

On Aug. 4, Optimal Dynamics CEO Daniel Powell will moderate a conversation for the 2026 TCA Online Leadership Series with two executives running successful AI playbooks across two complex freight networks:

- Brad Gerrard, CIO at Bison Transport
- Tracy Reiss, SVP of Transportation at KBX Logistics

During the webinar, they’ll discuss:

→ What it takes to move from AI curiosity to full deployment at scale
→ The difference between augmenting your operation and redefining how your network runs
→ How automating load planning, procurement, and dispatch drives utilization, protects driver satisfaction, and eliminates revenue leakage

Registration is free for TCA members. Save your seat here:

https://hubs.la/Q04qjpqK0

07/21/2026

One of the most important decisions a trucking company makes all day is whether to accept or reject a tender. It’s also the decision made with the least information.

We recently recapped our live walkthrough of Scale, the industry’s first Decision-Native Agentic System (DNAS), with Jake Dettmer, SVP of Product, and Ben Marks, Sr. Director of Solution Sales Engineering.

Key takeaways from the session:

- The accept-reject call happens in the "messy middle," where fleets have the worst information of the day.
- Scale ingests award files in any format and builds a commitment backbone with a health score for every contract.
- Loads get weighed against the whole network (Ben reallocated every flagged load in two clicks).
- The Network Manager projects balance forward, so you fix a surplus before it shows up in a report.

Read the full recap:

https://hubs.la/Q04q5kD-0

We recently hosted a live walkthrough of Scale and its capabilities with Jake Dettmer, Senior Vice President of Product, and Ben Marks, Senior Director of Solution Sales Engineering. Together, they ran through a product demo and shared how Scale impacts day-to-day carrier operations.

07/20/2026

Since 2022, an estimated 89,000 carriers have exited the market. That thinning of capacity is part of what’s (finally) firming up truckload pricing.

That’s the central finding of the 2026 State of Logistics Report by Kearney and Penske Logistics. The report warns fleets not to mistake a supply reset for a demand boom.

Instead, carriers should focus on:

- Prioritizing asset productivity
- Embedding intelligence (like end-to-end visibility)
- Avoiding “network drift” with real-time adjustments to changing circumstances

Penske’s Stacy Schlachter also noted that shippers are no longer paralyzed by disruption. They’re adapting — and they expect their partners to bring “decision intelligence.”

Decision intelligence is the layer we’ve been building at Optimal Dynamics for years, and it covers the list above: asset productivity, real-time network adjustments, and intelligence embedded in everyday dispatch and load decisions.

Get more details from the report in this recap by FleetOwner:

https://hubs.la/Q04p-Rkc0

2026 logistics outlook from CSCMP, Kearney, and Penske Logistics highlights supply-driven truckload recovery and capacity tightening.

07/14/2026

Meet our own JR Bisher at the North Carolina Trucking Association Annual Management Conference, coming up July 19–21 in Hot Springs, VA.

Optimal Dynamics is proud to support the NCTA and its members. Interested in booking a meeting during the event? Get in touch with us here:

https://hubs.la/Q04pspxW0

07/13/2026

Accepting 97 loads with one click only works if the system behind it knows what you’ve promised your customers.

In this clip from our Scale webinar, our own Ben Marks walks through where contracts live, where tenders get evaluated, and where every accept or reject decision gets made against the commitments you’ve actually made.

- Every tender is evaluated through the lens of your existing customer commitments
- Gain visibility into exactly where you stand on each commitment to date
- Drill down into individual lanes and rejections when something needs a closer look
- When the freight fits, you can accept all 97 loads at once

Watch the demo in the video below, and learn more about Scale here:

https://hubs.la/Q04pjTyb0

06/29/2026

Making commitments is the easy part. It’s much harder for carriers to know whether those commitments are on track.

Scale gives teams a clear view of commitment performance across the network, helping identify at-risk contracts, underperforming lanes, and where attention is needed next.

With Scale, carriers can:

✅ See the overall health of customer commitments in one place
✅ Identify contracts that are falling behind target
✅ Pinpoint the lanes creating the biggest risk
✅ Prioritize follow-up actions before service issues escalate

The goal is to know where to act before a commitment becomes a problem.

Watch the video to see how Scale supports your commitments. And then schedule time to see Scale in action:

https://hubs.la/Q04mXHgC0