It’s a flexible, innovative system that gets continually updated with new features. That’s what a company needs – a TMS that follows the latest technology advancements now and in the future.
– Jonas Dormaels, ICT Supervisor, Ninatrans
About Ninatrans
Ninatrans is an international transport company headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with branches across several European countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, France, and the UK. The company specialises in time-critical transport and offers a comprehensive range of services, including refrigerated and perishable transport, FTL and LTL operations, groupage and distribution, warehousing, road feeder operations for the air cargo sector, and tanker transport.
With the slogan “your timing, our drive,” Ninatrans has built its reputation on flexibility and precision, particularly in industries where timing is essential. The team serves diverse sectors such as events, air cargo, and temperature-controlled logistics, providing reliable and efficient solutions for both large-scale and specialised transport needs.
What distinguishes Ninatrans is its commitment to tailored customer solutions — including seamless system integrations, digital innovation, and continuous investment in smart technologies that enhance efficiency and visibility. Alongside its focus on operational excellence, Ninatrans places great importance on sustainability, actively pursuing initiatives that reduce its environmental impact and promote more responsible, future-oriented logistics.
The challenge
Ninatrans reached a pivotal moment four years ago following the acquisition of another Belgian transport company. While Ninatrans operated on a custom-built TMS that perfectly supported its original workflows, the newly acquired business introduced entirely different transport requirements — including groupage and tanker operations — that the existing system wasn’t designed to handle.
“We were getting to a point where we needed to make a decision,” explains Jonas. “Do we adapt our system to support these new transport types, or do we look for something completely new?”
The legacy TMS at the acquired company came with its own challenges. As a Windows-only platform, it was incompatible with Ninatrans’ predominantly Mac-based environment. More importantly, it lacked regular updates, had become cumbersome to use, and wasn’t scalable across different locations or countries — a serious limitation for a growing international business.
“It simply wasn’t keeping up with technology,” says Jonas. “We needed a modern, web-based, AI-powered solution — one that could scale across our operations, automate workflows, and be easily rolled out to new companies as we continued to grow.”
After evaluating several options, Ninatrans chose Qargo as the foundation for its new TMS. Qargo offered a fully cloud-based platform that supported the full range of Ninatrans’ transport operations, including refrigerated, perishable, and tanker transport, as well as road feeder services for air cargo. Its flexible architecture allowed seamless integration with existing systems, while future AI-driven automation will further streamline workflows and enhance operational efficiency. Crucially, Qargo’s scalability meant it could grow alongside Ninatrans, supporting both future acquisitions and cross-border operations with ease.
How they found Qargo
Ninatrans discovered Qargo at ICT & Logistiek Jaarbeurs Utrecht in The Netherlands, an industry event where they were actively evaluating TMS solutions. After seeing a brief preview of the platform’s capabilities, the team quickly arranged a formal demo.
“After a short preview, that’s how the ball got rolling,” says Jonas, who was part of the evaluation team. “It went really fast in the end. It didn’t take long to make our decision.”
The onboarding experience
The onboarding experience with Qargo was smooth and collaborative. As is the case with any software implementation, a number of practical challenges emerged and certain aspects arose that had not been fully anticipated in advance. Throughout the process, however, the close and constructive collaboration between the Ninatrans team and Qargo’s transport specialists proved essential. By maintaining open communication and a solution-oriented approach, both parties were able to address issues promptly and effectively. As a result, potential disruptions were mitigated quickly and project delays were kept to an absolute minimum.
“In my eyes it was a positive experience,” says Jonas. “We had good contact with our onboarding managers and the people who were here for the training. They provided enough explanation to everyone, questions were answered fast, and the follow-up was great.”
A key aspect of the onboarding process was Qargo’s responsiveness to feature requests. Ninatrans had several specific requirements, particularly the subcontractor portal which was a “must-have” before they could go live.
The solution
Once live, the wins landed quickly. One of the biggest shifts was moving from manual, time-heavy workflows to fast, automated processes that scale across countries.
One of the first changes came in the ability to import orders directly into Qargo, which was not possible in the previous TMS.“If we do 4,000 trips in a month, 2,500 are fixed,” Jonas explains. “Before, the planner lost hours creating them. Now it’s one click and everything is created automatically. That’s a huge win.”
Similar gains have come in dispatching orders to trucks. What once consumed 30–60 minutes every day is now handled automatically in the background, without users even noticing.
Another area transformed is pricing and invoicing. Complex rate cards now calculate transport, fuel, tolls and surcharges automatically. Not only does this speed up billing, it also gives operations and management a clear breakdown of revenue, costs, and profit at trip level once all parameters are configured correctly.
For invoicing it’s good, for operations it’s good, but for management it’s even better. We finally start to get a clear overview of revenue, costs and profit on every trip.
The system has also made it easy to transfer orders between tenants across Europe, enabling seamless cross-border sourcing. And by adopting Qargo Intelligence features like PDF-to-order creation, the team has cut down on repetitive data entry.
Crucially, the customer portal has reduced enquiry volumes, giving customers real-time visibility of trip status and delivery progress. Instead of long email chains, clients can self-serve updates, leaving the team more time to proactively support drivers and customers.
“Week after week we hear, ‘It’s so much easier than life before Qargo,’” says Jonas.
The results
Since implementing Qargo, Ninatrans has seen significant operational improvements across their business:
✅ 30% fewer customer status enquiries — thanks to the portal, clients self-serve rather than starting long email chains
✅ Fixed-trip creation in one click — monthly batch creation dropped from hours to instant
✅ 30–60 minutes saved daily on trip dispatching — orders flow to trucks automatically in the background
✅ Faster, clearer invoicing — automated rate cards split charges for transport, fuel, and tolls, reducing queries
✅ Trip-level profitability — management and ops can now see revenue, costs, and margin more clearly on every job
✅ Better follow-up — planners spend more time supporting drivers and customers instead of firefighting
“The follow-up is a lot better now towards our drivers and towards our customers because the team has more time for it,” Jonas explains.
The team’s feedback has been consistently positive. “I still hear it weekly that users say, ‘It’s good that we have this now. It’s a lot easier than a year ago.’ That really has a big impact on day-to-day operations.”
These gains highlight a bigger truth: in today’s time-critical industry, automation and visibility aren’t optional — they’re survival. By unifying diverse operations under one scalable, cloud-based TMS, Ninatrans has reduced manual effort, freed planners to focus on customers and drivers, and given management the clarity to make smarter decisions as they expand across Europe.
“Users have more time to follow up with drivers and customers. The work is more efficient—and management gets a clearer view of revenue, costs and profit at trip level.”
What’s next?
Ninatrans is rolling out Qargo across Germany, Spain and the UK, doubling their user base to around 50 operational users. The focus now is on increasing the use of Artificial Intelligence further improving operational efficiency, scaling automation and ensuring every new system adopted works seamlessly with Qargo.
“Anything new we adopt needs to work with Qargo,” says Jonas. “And if I had one piece of advice, it’s to really test your own workflows before go-live. That makes all the difference.”
With the Qargo transport management platform as their foundation, Ninatrans is well-positioned to continue their expansion across Europe, bringing their time-critical transport expertise to new markets with a system that can scale alongside their ambitions.
Qargo is flexible and innovative-and it keeps getting better.