If your customers already trust your brand for freight forwarding, warehousing, or import services, sending them to a third-party TMS with someone else's logo is a hard sell — and a real risk to the relationship you built. A white-label freight platform lets you offer online quoting, booking, and tracking under your own brand, while the underlying carrier network and rating engine run behind the scenes.
But "white label" means very different things depending on who's offering it. Before you sign anything, here's what actually matters.
Agent vs. White Label Partner — know which one you're evaluating
| Tier | What you get | Best for |
|---|
| Agent | Use the platform's brand, set your own markup, manage your customers, tracking, POD, orders and billing | Getting started fast without building anything |
| White Label Partner | Everything an Agent gets, plus your own logo, domain, branded customer portal, and document letterhead | Forwarders and 3PLs who want the platform invisible to their customers |
Four questions to ask before you commit
- Do I keep my customers? The platform should never be able to solicit your book of business directly. Customer ownership stays with you — full stop.
- Do my customers ever see my buy rate? Rate confidentiality matters as much as markup privacy. If a customer can see what you paid, your margin conversation is over before it starts.
- Is my data actually separated? Not "access-controlled" — separated. Another partner on the same platform should have no path to your shipment or customer data.
- What happens if I outgrow the tier I start at? A real partner program has a path — Agent to Qualified Partner to White Label to Strategic Partner — without re-signing from scratch every time your volume grows.
What a white-label setup should include
At minimum: your logo and domain on the customer-facing quote and tracking pages, your company name on BOLs and invoices, and a rating engine that's already connected to multiple carriers across LTL, truckload, drayage, and intermodal — so you're not stitching together five vendor logins to quote one shipment.
How ShipMay approaches this
ShipMay arranges and manages freight through a network of qualified third-party carriers, with a partner program built around the four questions above: customer ownership stays with the partner, buy rates are never exposed to the partner's customers, markups are set by the partner, and partner data is kept separate by design — not by promise. The path from Agent to White Label Partner is the same platform, not a different product.
If you're a freight forwarder, 3PL, or warehouse operator evaluating white-label freight technology, see how the Partner Program works or review White Label requirements.
Transportation services referenced here are performed by authorized third-party motor carriers and other qualified service providers; ShipMay arranges and coordinates transportation through its platform.
FAQ
What's the difference between an Agent and a White Label Partner?
An Agent uses the platform's brand, sets their own markup, and manages their own customers, tracking, POD, orders and billing. A White Label Partner gets everything an Agent gets, plus their own logo, domain, branded customer portal, and document letterhead — so the underlying platform is invisible to their customers.
Do I keep ownership of my customers on a white-label freight platform?
On a properly structured partnership, yes — the platform should never be able to solicit the partner's customers directly. Customer ownership stays with the partner, full stop.
Will my customers see the rate I pay the platform (my buy rate)?
They should not. Rate confidentiality and markup privacy are both essential — if a customer can see what the partner paid, the partner's margin conversation is effectively over.
Is partner data actually separated on a shared freight platform?
It should be separated by design, not just access-controlled. Another partner on the same platform should have no path to a different partner's shipment or customer data.