Tech & AI Oct 20, 2026 · 7 min read

CargoWise and Dray Dog automate LA/Long Beach truck appointments

CargoWise now books LA/Long Beach terminal slots on its own. On 20 October, WiseTech Global linked three of its US drayage dispatch systems (Trinium, Profit Tools, Compcare) to Dray Dog. Dray Dog watches marine-terminal portals and books open truck appointments by rules the trucker sets. LA and Long Beach come first. In our view, a slot now goes to whoever has the software, not whoever has the most staff refreshing portals. One Trinium user says the link means “booking earlier appointments which reduces supply chain lag.” Forwarders should ask their truckers whether they use it. Our call: CargoWise extends the link to a second US port complex by end of Q1 2027.

The race for LA/Long Beach truck slots just moved inside the dispatch screen
On 20 October 2026, WiseTech Global said its CargoWise Landside software now plugs into Dray Dog, a tool that books marine-terminal truck appointments automatically. Three US trucking dispatch systems are covered: Trinium, Profit Tools and Compcare. The first market is the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. WiseTech gave no price and no rollout timetable.
That sounds like a small product note. We think it is more than that. At San Pedro Bay, the bottleneck for a trucker is often not the truck or the driver. It is the appointment: the timed slot a terminal gives a truck to collect or drop a container. Until now, many trucking firms have won those slots by having staff watch several terminal websites and pounce when one opens. This integration hands that job to software that sits inside the dispatcher’s own system. In our view, the slots will increasingly go to the trucking companies running that software, and forwarders should start asking which of their truckers do.

What was announced

Some definitions first. Drayage is the short truck move between a port terminal and a nearby warehouse, rail yard or depot. A TMS (transport management system) is the software a trucking company uses to plan loads, assign drivers and bill customers. The three covered here, Trinium, Profit Tools and Compcare, are TMS products sold to US drayage carriers by WiseTech’s CargoWise Landside unit.
Dray Dog is the appointment layer. According to WiseTech’s release, it retrieves open terminal slots and books them according to parameters the trucker sets in advance, so dispatchers no longer have to watch separate portals. The integration runs in both directions. Container data flows from the TMS to Dray Dog to start the scheduling. Confirmed appointments, including reference numbers, flow back into the TMS. That removes the second round of typing and updates dispatch plans in real time, the release says. Appointment details also reach driver apps, including Trinium’s MC3 and its Driver Mobile App.
“Every minute counts in drayage,” said Jon Steitzer, head of Dray Dog. “We built Dray Dog to give truckers the best possible tool to manage appointments at every step of the container lifecycle.”
Dennis Lane, head of revenue for CargoWise Landside Solutions, said, as reported by The Loadstar, that the integration delivers “immediate productivity gains” by automating a repetitive, time-sensitive task.

Why the appointment is the choke point

Matt Schrap, former chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, set out the problem plainly to The Loadstar. “You’re operating across several different platforms, not only in the port ecosystem, but within your own company,” he said. “You deal with availability from the carrier or terminal, then find an appointment,” and “then interface with dispatch software, just to get a truck out of the gate.”
His conclusion: “To have a person doing that doesn’t make sense when software exists.”
The appointment system at LA and Long Beach is not new. In August 2015, FreightWaves reported that ten terminals at the two ports had agreed to a coordinated appointment programme announced by PierPass, the terminal operators’ organisation. Five terminals already running appointment systems adopted common rules straight away, starting with imports, and five more were due to follow in 2016. “Appointments will be mandatory at all participating terminals,” PierPass said at the time. Even then, the National Industrial Transportation League’s Bruce Carlton warned: “It’s not a panacea.” The Harbor Trucking Association’s ask in that period was simple: get trucks in and out within an hour.
A decade on, the slots exist, but each terminal still runs its own portal. That is the friction Dray Dog is built to remove. The payoff, according to the one customer quoted in the release, is speed. Mark Rabens, senior vice president of transportation at Custom Goods & Quik Pick Express, said the Trinium–Dray Dog link has automated appointment scheduling at the LA and Long Beach terminals, and credited it with “booking earlier appointments which reduces supply chain lag.”

Who owns the pipes

The more interesting story may be the ownership map behind this announcement.
On one side sits WiseTech. In January 2023 it agreed to buy Envase Technologies, a US landside logistics software firm, for $230 million, according to STAT Times. Envase had “more than 1,300 customers across North America,” including trucking companies, ports, depots and warehouses. That deal gave CargoWise a large foothold with the US trucking firms that actually move boxes off the docks.
On the other side sits CargoSprint, a payments and workflow company in Lone View Capital’s portfolio. In December 2024 it bought Advent eModal, described in the deal record on PrivSource as “the world’s largest port community platform”. In February 2026 it bought Dray Dog. Lone View’s Doug Ceto said at the time that “Dray Dog adds a carrier-obsessed, data-driven capability in one of the most operationally intense parts of the supply chain.”
So the trucker’s dispatch screen (WiseTech) is now wired directly to an appointment engine (CargoSprint) whose parent also runs a major port community system. Our read: the landside of a US import is consolidating into a small number of software stacks. For a forwarder, that is useful when it works. It also means fewer places to go when it does not.
There is a caveat to our optimism. Automation does not create terminal capacity. It changes who gets the slots that exist. If every large trucker runs a bot, the early advantage shrinks, and terminals may start limiting how often automated tools can query their systems. The early movers gain most. Smaller firms still booking by hand are the ones likely to lose ground.

What it means for forwarders

Most forwarders and NVOCCs (non-vessel operating common carriers, which sell ocean space without owning ships) don’t run their own trucks in Southern California. They buy drayage from local carriers. Many of those carriers run on Trinium, Profit Tools or Compcare. So this change reaches forwarders whether they choose it or not.
The money sits in two charges. Demurrage is what the terminal or line charges when a container sits at the port beyond its free time. Per diem, also called detention, is what the line charges when its container or chassis is kept outside the terminal too long. An earlier appointment can mean an earlier pickup, fewer chargeable days and fewer disputes with shippers over who pays. Neither WiseTech nor Dray Dog has published figures on how many days, or dollars, the link saves. So treat the benefit as plausible but unproven until carriers share numbers.
Here is what we would do this quarter:

Ask your LA/Long Beach drayage partners which TMS they use and whether they book terminal appointments automatically. Put the question in your next carrier review.

Ask for evidence. Request their average time from container availability to booked appointment, before and after any automation.

Check your own data. If you can see appointment reference numbers sooner, your customer-facing ETAs to the warehouse get better. Ask whether those references can pass through to you, not just to the trucker’s dispatcher.

Watch the contract terms. If a trucker’s tooling cuts demurrage, expect them to price that in. That is fair, but it should show up in fewer storage invoices.

For shippers on the transpacific, the effect is modest but real: fewer containers sitting at the terminal waiting for a slot, and slightly more predictable delivery to inland warehouses. For truckers, the gap between firms with and without automation is likely to widen.

Our call

WiseTech chose Los Angeles and Long Beach because that is where appointment pain is greatest and where its landside customers cluster. Nothing in the announcement limits the idea to those two ports, and the software already sits inside systems used far beyond Southern California.
Our prediction: by the end of the first quarter of 2027, WiseTech or Dray Dog will announce that the CargoWise Landside integration covers at least one more US port complex, most likely New York/New Jersey or Savannah. We also expect at least one rival drayage TMS vendor to announce a similar automated appointment link within the same window. If neither happens by then, we will take it as a sign that the terminals, not the software firms, are setting the pace.

Sources