How Ofload gained a competitive advantage with accurate CO₂e reporting

Australia-based freight partner, Ofload, uses BigMile’s Emissions API to give shippers and carriers transparent, shipment-level CO₂e insights directly within its platform. This helps customers benchmark performance, reduce emissions, and prepare for Australia’s new sustainability reporting requirements. Read more below.

Company

Ofload

Employees

130

Industry

Freight Tech

SHIPMENTS

230k pallets

Ofload supports transport of 230k pallets on average each month

CUSTOMERS

100s of customers

Emissions dashboards give Ofload’s customers an accurate view of their CO₂e emissions

EMISSIONS

30% less emissions

Identified opportunity to reduce emissions for Kimberly-Clark by 30% by switching to an EV truck in Brisbane

Get visibility of your CO₂e emissions

Join 200+ companies using BigMile to calculate, analyze, and report on their emissions

Book your demo

Founded in Sydney, Ofload is an end-to-end freight partner that helps businesses across the country to deliver their goods on time and in full, via a network of trusted carriers. It aims to remove waste from transport across Australia—a sector which accounts for 22% of total emissions—by improving truck utilization and creating a more efficient freight transport system.

We sat down with Andreia Gomes (Senior Product Manager) and Drew McKinnel (VP Growth) to learn how they use BigMile’s Emission API to give their customers access to accurate emissions data and insights that help them make their transport operations more sustainable.

Increasing requests for emissions data from clients

Since Ofload was launched in 2019, sustainability has been embedded throughout the company’s operations, from offsetting the carbon emitted by its trucks to helping its clients reduce empty miles (trucks travel empty about 30% of the time on average) and improve truck utilisation.

As Andreia explains: “Our founder Geoff has always cared a lot about sustainability, and so we’ve been offsetting our carbon emissions and reporting on it for years but we wanted to move towards measuring our carbon footprint more accurately.”

Back in 2023, most companies weren’t yet required to report on their emissions, but regulations like ASRS were on the horizon. And Ofload’s clients—both carriers and shippers—were starting to request more details on the emissions of their transport journeys.

All of this meant it was the perfect time for Ofload to add emissions calculation tools as part of its platform and service.

Connecting the Emissions API to Ofload’s platform

From the outset, the Ofload team decided that they needed an expert solution partner to get started with calculating their emissions, rather than building a spreadsheet-based calculator themselves. Carbon accounting was still a relatively new concept in Australia, so Ofload explored options from further afield when looking for the right solution.

Unlike traditional freight companies, Ofload has a digital platform that serves both shippers, who want to find a carrier to transport their goods, and carriers who want to bid for specific loads. This meant that it needed a solution that could easily work with its existing platform.

BigMile was soon selected as the preferred partner. Within just a couple of months, Ofload was using BigMile’s Emission API to accurately calculate the CO₂e emissions of every journey registered in its platform.

Case study continues below

“We spoke to a few solution providers but chose BigMile as its API approach was aligned with how we wanted to track emissions. They were very knowledgeable and had been doing carbon accounting for a long time so we were confident that we’d be providing as accurate as possible emissions data to our customers.”

Andreia Gomes, Senior Product Manager at Ofload

Book your demo

Providing real-time visibility of emissions from each shipment

Now once a shipment is delivered, the API automatically calculates the emissions for that shipment and the data is immediately available to the customer via a dashboard, whether they’re a shipper or a carrier.

‍

The API uses certified default emissions factors from the GLEC framework to calculate emissions across all transport modes, fuel types, and shipping methods—such as less-than-truckload (LTL) and full truckload (FTL)—even when limited data is available.

All imported transport data is automatically validated and standardized by the API, which is essential for Ofload as it receives data from many different carriers. This ensures that emissions calculations are accurate and any discrepancies are immediately spotted.

Platform users can easily export emissions data from the platform to provide to their customers, stakeholders, comply with regulations or just to inform their own sustainability strategy.

Helping customers reduce emissions with analytics and scenario planning

But Ofload doesn’t stop at just calculating and providing emissions data. In line with its continuous improvement ethos, it also helps customers to analyze their overall emissions and identify ways to reduce empty miles and optimize their loads to make their transport operations more sustainable.

From the custom dashboards, Ofload’s shipper and carrier customers can easily compare the emissions of different shipments and routes, and with the what-if scenario planning tools they can figure out alternative ways to make these journeys more sustainable. This could be anything from switching fuel type to combining loads.

Having access to emissions data from around 230k pallets per month means Ofload can also help their customers establish benchmarks that they can then improve on.

As Drew explains: “I think one of the other key things is that we use the data more broadly across our network to create benchmarks, particularly tied to specific verticals. This helps our clients understand how they are performing versus their peers in the market.”

As for its own emissions, Ofload leads by example using the Emission API to calculate and analyze the carbon footprint of its own transport activities for its own emissions reduction efforts and also so it can offset its baseline emissions through credible climate projects.

Gaining a competitive edge in tenders and building loyalty

Ofload was one of the first (and only) freight companies to give clients visibility and insights into their transport emissions which helps it to win more contracts and retain existing customers who are now also getting started with emissions reporting. As Drew explains:

“It helps differentiate us from our competitors because it’s not something that is standardly offered in Australia. Every one of these other businesses has a spreadsheet where they're trying to run a manual calculation, but not necessarily using an agreed framework, so to have BigMile’s GLEC-aligned calculation method is super critical for us.”

“I've already seen the true benefits in terms of how it supports our growth and securing new business sales, including bringing new enterprise-level businesses to the table.”

Andrea shares that showing the emissions tools is actually one of her favorite parts of customer demos: “I just love the fact that sometimes when I'm talking to customers or doing a demo, I can log into the platform and go to the carbon analytics dashboard and the information is there. It's so simple. It's so powerful.”

Advice for companies at the start of their carbon accounting journey

Going from no emissions calculations to providing emissions reports to all your customers may seem daunting, but Andreia has two pieces of advice for companies to help them on their journey:

“The first one would be to start simple, and focus on what you can control not perfection. The biggest mistake you can make is trying to measure everything at once which leads to analysis paralysis. And also that I think you need to treat data collection as a product and not a project, because carbon accounting is not a one-time audit, it's a continuous process.”

As for Drew’s advice, he said it’s about playing to your strengths and not trying to do it all yourself: “It's about knowing who is the expert in the room. In this case, BigMile is the emissions expert and has a solution that can report exactly the information that is needed, and Ofload is a great freight management system. So through partnering with other experts, you can get the greatest outcome.”