“We went from two weeks to two days in our invoicing process. That is a key priority and simply important for your cash flow.”
— Joost Van Lierde, COO, Eskatrans
About Eskatrans
Eskatrans is a Belgian carrier with roots in container transport, founded by CEO Steven Meeus, who started the company as a side business while working as a technician. What began with a single truck has grown into a fleet of around 125 trucks, spread across various entities, including a division of 15 vehicles in Slovakia.
For many years, Eskatrans was primarily a supplier to freight forwarders — moving containers to and from the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. At one point, container transport accounted for more than 95% of revenue. But the market has changed, and Eskatrans changed with it. Freight forwarders are increasingly shifting operational responsibility onto the carrier, from tracking vessel positions to booking time slots at terminals, while margins in the transport sector continue to shrink.
“We have to track ourselves where the ship is, when the so-called cargo opening is, when we can pick up and deliver containers. The world has completely changed in that regard,” says Joost Van Lierde, COO.
In response, Eskatrans made a strategic decision to diversify. Where the company previously had only four trucks running for clients outside the port, it now has twenty to twenty-five per week, and the ambition to further grow the industrial client base continues to expand.
How They Found Qargo
Joost joined Eskatrans at the end of 2024, but already knew Qargo — he had used the platform previously at another transport company, where he had seen firsthand what Qargo could deliver. A planner’s desk buried under a pile of paper transformed within two weeks into a paperless environment. Order creation, subcontractor management, invoicing — all through Qargo, integrated with Platform Science on-board computers.
“After two weeks, there was only one tray left on that desk: the one where drivers dropped their paper CMRs when they returned. Everything else — orders, instructions — was digital.”
When he noticed at Eskatrans that the company had switched to a platform specifically built for deep-sea container transport, he quickly saw the limitations. Eskatrans’s strategic direction and the system’s capabilities were diverging.
A visit from the Qargo team, and a demo that clearly illustrated the platform’s evolution, confirmed that Qargo was the only option that could offer what they needed. Steven, the owner, put it simply: “If you trust it, I’ll follow your lead.”
The Challenge
Eskatrans had only been working with their previous TMS for nine months, but the limitations were already clear. The platform had been built for container transport, and container transport alone. As Eskatrans wanted to broaden its scope of work and reduce its dependence on deep-sea ports, the system could not support that growth.
Two specific frustrations stood out. First, there was no integration with the accounting firm — invoices were exported as PDFs and manually processed via OCR, resulting in errors and unnecessary costs. Second, the data structure itself was unreliable. Exports to Excel revealed a database architecture that did not add up, making meaningful reporting virtually impossible.
“I couldn’t extract clean data from the system. And if the data is wrong, the reporting is wrong,” says Joost.
There was also a pricing problem. The diesel surcharge — which fluctuates regularly and applies to every client — had to be manually updated client by client with every change. In a sector where margins are tight and fuel costs volatile, that amounted to a great many valuable hours lost.
The Solution
With Qargo, the difference from their previous TMS was immediately apparent.
Qargo’s rate structure gave Eskatrans the flexibility and precision they had been missing. Rate cards could be built around the port-specific complexity of their work: separate postal code zones for the left and right banks of Antwerp, Rotterdam port zones, and more. A diesel surcharge change across the entire client base — previously a time-consuming client-by-client operation — now takes just a few minutes.
“I enter it once and it’s done,” says Joost. “Diesel prices are rising sharply right now, and we can simply react very quickly.”
The impact on invoicing has been spectacular. The order-to-cash cycle, from completed transport to sent invoice, has been reduced from two weeks to two days. That is a structural change in cash flow.
The customer portal has also grown into a genuine asset. Around 160 to 170 users log in to track shipments — clients, freight forwarders and partners who check the status of their jobs themselves and retrieve documents without having to call the office.
“The reflex of our staff now, when a client asks for a document, is to ask whether they have access to the customer portal. Everything is there. That level of transparency — that’s where we make the difference,” says Joost.
The Qargo driver app, linked to the Transics on-board computers, has also fundamentally changed the collaboration between drivers and coordinators. Drivers receive stops directly via the integration, confirm arrivals, work through personalised task lists and send photos at key moments during the trip — all paperless. Eskatrans configures those question flows themselves: which questions are asked, which answers are mandatory, when a photo is required.
“The fact that I as a user can determine that myself — without a consultant, without development costs — that is a completely different model,” says Joost.
On the front of AI-assisted order entry, Eskatrans is already up and running — with a memorable anecdote to show for it. On the very first day after going live, a driver at a terminal photographed a stack of around sixty containers at once. Qargo’s AI read every container number in the photo. When the driver confirmed his container, they watched the number light up in green among all the others.
“That’s one of those moments where you see what’s behind the platform,” says Joost. “There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit we haven’t picked yet — but the potential is there.”
Integrations
Eskatrans has connected Qargo to the core tools for finance and fleet management:
- Accounting integration: Invoices flow automatically to the external accounting firm, replacing manual PDF exports and OCR processing
- On-board computers (Transics): Bidirectional integration sends trip stops and addresses to drivers’ on-board units; arrival confirmations and activity updates come back in real time into the Qargo planning view
The Onboarding
The go-live on 17 September was a hard cutover: everything from the sixteenth stayed in their previous TMS; from the seventeenth onwards, it was Qargo.
Because most of the team had only switched nine months earlier — and had previously worked with a basic, Excel-like system called Fileserver — the mental transition had already been made. The move to Qargo felt less shocking than it might have been.
Guillian from the Qargo onboarding team was present at the go-live and remained closely involved during the start-up phase. Data templates were provided, rate structures were built from scratch around the complexity of port zones, and configuration decisions were worked through together.
“We called him ‘Qargoman’ internally,” recalls Joost. “We communicated well, knew what to expect from each other, and it was a great collaboration.”
Qargo’s flexibility — which gives users control over their own layouts, views and workflows — is both its greatest asset and its greatest challenge during implementation. Without sufficient guidance, users can each find their own way through the system.
“It’s a bit like driving without a GPS — you’ll find a route, but not always the right one,” says Joost. “That’s why we’re now investing time in properly defining those processes, so that the platform works with us.”
Follow-up from Qargo remains consistent. Bernard from the Qargo team recently came on-site for a business review — he spoke with users, observed how the platform was being used in practice, and gave feedback to Joost.
“He said he couldn’t actually find anything to improve. I thought: that’ll come. But it’s a good starting point,” says Joost.
The Results
Since going live, Eskatrans has seen clear improvements in invoicing, operations and customer experience — with more gains on the horizon as data discipline becomes further embedded.
✅ Billing cycle reduced from 2 weeks to 2 days — a structural improvement in cash flow that Joost describes as one of Qargo’s most important commercial strengths
✅ Diesel surcharge and rate management centralised — rate changes that previously had to be pushed through client by client now take just a few minutes
✅ 160–170 users on the customer portal — clients track their own shipments and retrieve their own documents, reducing inbound calls and strengthening trust
✅ Paperless operations — on-board computer integration and the Qargo driver app have replaced paper-based job management across the entire fleet
✅ AI-assisted order entry — less manual input and fewer errors
✅ Seamless accounting integration — invoices flow automatically, replacing error-prone PDF processing
“For me, Qargo is what the circulatory system is to the human body — it carries the oxygen and removes the waste. But it’s also your nervous system, because you get a feel for reality. If there’s a pain point somewhere, it surfaces through Qargo. Ten times the same incident at the same location, a driver who has been waiting for three hours — Qargo tells you. If you use it well, it does what you ask of it.” — Joost Van Lierde, COO, Eskatrans
Why This Matters
Transport companies today are asked to do more — with ever-shrinking margins, more uncertainty and more complexity. The freight forwarder model is changing. Ports are evolving. Carriers who previously received clear instructions now manage a large part of the logistics chain themselves.
For operators navigating this shift, the systems they work with are critically important. A TMS built for yesterday’s workflows, or for too narrow a slice of the market, becomes a ceiling rather than a foundation.
“You wouldn’t send a driver internationally today in a truck without a sleeper cab either,” says Joost. “The same logic applies to your technology. Make sure you have the right tools to do what you want to do.”
The Eskatrans story also reflects a broader truth about the value of data. Qargo works best when the team understands that every input — every confirmed trip, every recorded incident, every logged waiting time — feeds the reporting that enables better decisions. That culture of data discipline is something Eskatrans is actively building, and the platform is the infrastructure that makes it possible.
What’s Still to Come
Eskatrans’s ambitions are clear: grow the direct industrial client base, reduce dependence on the freight forwarding sector, and position the company to knock on the doors of larger players. That requires investment in certifications, professionalisation of processes and continued scaling.
Joost wants to leverage Qargo far more deeply — defining client-specific workflows, automating steps that are still manual today, and making the platform work across the full breadth of its capabilities.
Client-specific order integrations are also on the agenda. For clients with sufficient volume, loading orders directly into Qargo should eliminate errors and speed up the entire process.
“There is still so much in this platform that we haven’t tapped into yet,” says Joost. “If you’re genuinely interested in it, you keep discovering new possibilities. We are nowhere near the ceiling.”
Next Steps
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