Photo credit: PCS Software

PCS Software, a leading transportation management system provider for trucking carriers, today announced the expansion of Cortex, its AI-powered platform, to deliver whole-fleet dispatch optimization across both truckload and less-than-truckload operations. The announcement follows the company's release of Cortex LTL capabilities and extends those capabilities across the full scope of fleet operations — from selecting the best available freight to building and continuously re-optimizing driver assignments, multi-stop routes, and backhaul opportunities across the entire fleet simultaneously.

For decades, dispatch software has worked the same way: one load, one driver, one decision, then move to the next. At scale, that approach limits planning to what a single dispatcher can hold in their head and caps the horizon at whatever is already on today's board. Dispatch powered by Cortex changes the fundamental unit of work — from a single load to the entire fleet.

The platform simultaneously scores every open load against every available driver, accounting for a multitude of factors including economic considerations, hours-of-service requirements, home-time commitments, driver schedules, and equipment availability — across the whole fleet at once. When a new load arrives, a driver becomes unavailable, or any condition changes, the plan re-solves across all assignments in real time, not just the one piece that changed. Carriers can plan operations up to 30 days in advance, chaining multi-stop routes together automatically as new freight arrives on the board. When a recommended plan doesn't fit, the system shows its reasoning — which driver, which score, which alternative — so dispatchers can override with confidence rather than building from scratch.

"Optimization of your fleet has become ever more complex and is the area where profit is unlocked or lost every day. The best dispatchers have always thought about the whole picture — not just the next load, but the best chain of loads with the best driver on the best route. Cortex makes that kind of strategic planning available to every dispatcher on the team, in real time, and with the multitude of considerations that can only be handled with the help of AI. You stop reacting to what's in front of you and start running your fleet the way a strategist would — factoring in and solving for the best economics as well as the best driver outcomes and customer outcomes simultaneously "

— Mark Hill, Chief Executive Officer, PCS Software

The expanded Cortex capabilities work alongside two additional platform features: Load Opportunity Manager, which automatically scores and ranks incoming freight from EDI feeds, email, and load boards against a carrier's own profitability rules — surfacing the best loads before a dispatcher ever sees the load— and Backhaul Booster, a complementary feature that proactively identifies return-leg freight opportunities to reduce empty miles on the back end of a run. Together, the three capabilities span the full dispatch cycle: select the right freight, plan the most efficient way to run it across the fleet, and find the load coming home.

For LTL Operations, Cortex optimizes multi-stop, multi-trip routes across every candidate driver — rerouting loads based on driver location, delivery feasibility, and trailer capacity, and surfacing the best driver pairing for each trip — without disrupting the way dispatchers already build their routes. The same global-optimization model that drives truckload assignment underlies the LTL engine, bringing the same fleet-wide intelligence to one of the most operationally complex parts of the business.