Why rely on Contractors for last‑mile logistics
Outsourcing last‑mile execution to trusted contractor organizations gives you flexibility, scalability, and efficiency. Instead of relying solely on your own fleet, you can tap into a network of specialist delivery partners with local knowledge and capacity — and scale volume up or down seamlessly.
In Mover TMS, contractors are fully integrated: you maintain real‑time visibility into routes, shared notes, and agreed payment terms — all within the same platform.
Key benefits include:
Operational flexibility – scale quickly when needed, without long‑term asset commitments
Cost control – assign routes based on contractual capacity, cost, and performance
Visibility & control – share route progress, notes, and payment terms directly in the TMS
How to collaborate with Contractors in Mover TMS
Set up a Connection
First, you and your contractor must be connected in Mover TMS. The Connections feature lets you link organizations so you can share orders, routes and execution status while maintaining full control over performance settings, guaranteed volumes, and other parameters.
Assign your Orders and Routes to a Contractor
Depending on your needs, you can assign either Orders or Routes to your contractors:
Assign Orders to a Connection
Use Order Enrichment Rules to automatically assign incoming orders to one of your Connections, based on defined criteria. This is useful when you want to fully delegate both Route Planning and execution to your Contractor.Assign Routes to a Contractor
If you prefer to keep route planning in-house but still want to outsource execution, Mover TMS offers three ways to assign Routes to Contractors:Manual Contractor Assignment
Auto Contractor Assignment
Intelligent Contractor Assignment
Collaborate on the Route execution
Even after assigning a contractor, you can continue to monitor and collaborate on route execution:
Track progress in real time via the TMS
Add and view shared Notes, including instructions or updates
Define a custom Payment Basis for individual routes, when needed
Mover TMS enables transparent, collaborative execution — helping you and your Contractors stay aligned and efficient.
What method should I use to assign my Routes to the Contractors?
1. Manual Contractor Assignment
Best for flexible or ad hoc scenarios.
The planner selects a Contractor manually on the Route Details page or from the Routes list.
Ideal when there are no fixed rules, and contractor selection depends on daily decisions around geography, availability, or cost.
Useful when your sourcing systems are not integrated with the TMS.
2. Auto Contractor Assignment
Best when assignments follow predictable patterns.
Use when one contractor consistently serves a specific Distribution Center, or when routes from certain geographies always go to the same partner.
You can define geographic or attribute-based rules so routes are automatically assigned upon creation.
Ideal for standardized operations with minimal manual intervention.
Read more about the Auto Contractor Assignment
3. Intelligent Contractor Assignment
Best for complex, multi‑contractor operations.
Designed for teams looking to optimize contractor allocation based on data.
Enables planners to assign routes using real‑time factors such as Available capacity, Cost, Forecasted and guaranteed utilization, Historical quality ratings
Maximizes efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and fairness across your contractor network.
The ICS requires additional data around capacity, cost, forecasts, etc. to be able to optimally allocate Routes to your Contractors.
For a step by step guide on how to reap all the benefits of Intelligent Contractor Selection, follow the link to the dedicated page
Conclusion
By partnering with contractors through Connections, and leveraging Mover TMS’s flexible assignment options and real‑time collaboration features, you can scale your last‑mile execution, delegate some of the monitoring and proactive deviation handling, while maintaining full control and visibility.