FourKites integration: location and Dynamic ETA

Some of the carriers on your board already share their location with shippers through a visibility network instead of, or alongside, an ELD connection. FourKites is one of those networks, and Roadmark reads the location and predictive ETA it reports for any carrier that's already connected through it, so tracking has a current ETA without that carrier installing anything new for Roadmark specifically.

How a carrier gets into FourKites' network

FourKites runs its own onboarding for carriers through FourKites Connect, a self-service dashboard where a carrier enters credentials for its ELD or GPS provider once, FourKites says covering more than 900 providers, and manages every connection from one place: which providers are connected, updating credentials when they expire, and which shipper customers it's being tracked for. Roadmark doesn't do that onboarding: it reads from carriers already connected on FourKites' side.

Connecting Roadmark to FourKites

FourKites issues API access to customers through its own account setup rather than an open self-service signup; an admin on your FourKites account sets up that access so Roadmark can read location and ETA data for the loads you're tracking. Nothing about how a carrier connects through FourKites Connect changes.

What Dynamic ETA adds

FourKites calls its predictive ETA Dynamic ETA, calculated from a carrier's current signals rather than only the last status update, so it updates continuously as a load moves instead of jumping between check-ins. Roadmark reads that ETA the same way it reads an ELD's: as one of five sources feeding a load's status, alongside the driver app, a carrier's own app or an EDI 214, other visibility networks, and a check call when nothing else is reporting. The same ETA that shows up on the load board is what a customer sees in their own portal.

A worked example

Load 48237 is billed to Harrow Lane Trucking, an outside carrier tendered the load rather than one of Ashgrove's own units. There's no Roadmark-side ELD connection to a truck that isn't yours, so if Harrow Lane Trucking has already connected through FourKites Connect, Roadmark reads its location from FourKites instead: tracking gets an ETA for 48237 the same way it would from a connected ELD, and the customer waiting on that load sees it in their own portal, without dispatch calling Harrow Lane Trucking to check.

Why this matters for brokers

A broker or a group's brokerage arm tenders loads to carriers it doesn't operate, so it can't put an ELD connection in a truck it doesn't run. FourKites is built for that gap: it's the carrier, through FourKites Connect, that shares its position, not the freight's owner, so a broker gets a current ETA on a purchased-power load the same way a carrier gets one on its own trucks. That's what reaches the customer portal either way.

For a broker or carrier already working with FourKites-connected carriers, the change is mostly that the board and the customer portal catch up to what FourKites has been reporting the whole time, instead of a dispatcher copying an ETA across from a separate dashboard.