“If people haven’t done the switch, they should definitely consider it — if they want to be around for the future, and be around a company that is constantly looking at ways of developing.”
Macauley Christopher- Client Relationship Manager – Premier Logistics (UK) LTD
About Premier Logistics
Over the past two decades, what started as a Leicestershire-based carrier has become a serious operation: two sites, 110 vehicles, around 220 employees, and 330,000 square feet of warehousing. In December 2025, Premier Logistics acquired WT Transport — effectively doubling its fleet overnight.
Macauley Christopher, now Sales and Commercial Director, has been at the heart of that journey — including the decision, two and a half years ago, to introduce Qargo.
How they found Qargo
Macauley’s decision to switch platforms was accelerated by Premier Logistics’s then TMS provider of nearly 15 years being bought out. At first, the platform’s new owner appeared to offer all the features needed for the haulier to transform its backend. However, six weeks into the onboarding process it became clear that certain promises would not be delivered. Undermining his confidence further, the provider subsequently fell victim to a cyber attack. “It was like we were being told that moving forward with them wasn’t the right thing to do — so we went our separate ways,” recalls Macauley.
This prompted a review of the TMS market. Macauley’s brief was simple: reduce admin burdens, improve operational efficiency, and support business growth — without relying on additional manpower alone. Giving customers full visibility of their orders was equally important.
Macauley posted on LinkedIn asking his industry peers for TMS recommendations. ‘Qargo’ was mentioned several times, and after a follow-up email from the Qargo team, he agreed to sit down for a demo.
The meeting left him impressed. “First, it was a cloud-based system — no need for a server at our end,” he says. “I was also impressed with the platform’s integration capabilities with other systems such as tracking.” The driver app sealed it. “The driver app was revolutionary — we had never had such capabilities before.”
But what impressed Macauley most was the team itself. “The people from Qargo were straight down the line and very honest. Crucially, they were open and transparent about the areas where the system still needed to be improved. Qargo never tried to present its platform as ‘the perfect system’ — because no such solution exists.”
The challenge
Relying on Premier Logistics’s existing processes was becoming increasingly unviable. Their previous TMS was outdated and sat alongside an over-reliance on Excel. “Our customers would put their orders on to our existing platform while we would plan our general haulage fleet in Excel,” explains Macauley. “It meant we were duplicating the work — and that needed to change.”
Integrations
From day one, the Palletforce API was a game-changer. “We used to do a lot of manual file exports from our previous TMS to Palletforce,” says Macauley. “Since the start of the Qargo relationship, there’s always been an API — which is great.” That alone eliminated the daily exchange of 10–15 Excel files.
Since then, Premier Logistics has continued to build out its integration stack. A Transforium API now pulls customer orders directly into Qargo, removing a manual re-entry step entirely. Sage 50 handles accounting and Samsara provides live vehicle tracking — both connected to Qargo, keeping the team’s view of the business in one place.
One of the more recent additions is the Outlook email integration, which uses Qargo’s AI to read incoming booking emails, extract the relevant information, and create jobs automatically. “If a customer sends us a PDF or an email with the booking, the AI picks it up, categorises it, and puts it into the correct format,” says Macauley.
Perhaps the most significant integration currently in progress is with a major customer’s own warehouse management system. Once the customer creates an order in their WMS, it syncs directly into Qargo with minimal manual input — removing a whole layer of administration on both sides.
Onboarding
Before going live, Macauley mapped out Premier Logistics’s internal processes and built them into a sandbox version of Qargo — adding drivers, rate cards and other key data, and identifying potential pinch points before they became real ones. It also gave him a way to demonstrate the platform to each department.
The team had used their previous system for over a decade, and old habits die hard. “I could show the team that they would no longer need to send start-time messages to each of our 50-odd drivers individually — instead, it could be done with a single click of a button,” he recalls.
For the go-live itself, Macauley chose the quiet period between Christmas and New Year 2023. Two Qargo team members came on-site for four days, working 10-hour shifts alongside Premier Logistics staff to ensure the transition ran smoothly.
“Like anything new, change can be very hard to accept — but Qargo’s offering helped change in-house perceptions.”
The solution
The clearest early win was eliminating duplication. Where staff had previously been managing jobs across both a TMS and a parallel Excel document, Qargo consolidated everything into one place. Planning shifted to a drag-and-drop interface — select multiple jobs, assign them to a trip, done. “That itself has probably saved a person two to three hours a day,” says Macauley.
Driver communications followed. What used to be a nightly ritual of manually texting start times to 50-odd drivers — eating up 30 to 45 minutes every evening — became a single bulk push to the driver app.
PODs have been similarly transformed. Every proof of delivery previously needed to be manually uploaded to the correct job. With Qargo, the system matches them automatically. “That’s probably saved somebody an hour a night,” says Macauley. “These incremental things have probably saved six hours in total — and I’m sure there are things we just take for granted now that we haven’t realised how much time they’re saving.”
In the accounts department, a time-consuming process has quietly disappeared. Before Qargo, sending PODs to customers required staff to open each job individually and manually email the relevant documents — before they could even begin invoicing. Now, bulk-sending PODs to customers is a single action. “To put an hour on that would probably be at least 10 hours a week,” says Macauley. “We’ve essentially gained back a day — a day and a bit — for someone in our accounts department.”
The customer portal has also become a selling point in its own right. Compared to their previous system — which was clunky, required extensive customer training, and relied on simple passwords — the Qargo portal is intuitive, customisable and secure. The two-factor authentication has addressed security concerns that existed with the previous platform.
The results
✅ 2–3 hours saved daily on transport planning — drag-and-drop job management replaced a manual process split across a TMS and Excel
✅ 30–45 minutes saved nightly on driver communications — bulk start-time dispatch via the driver app replaced individual messages to 50+ drivers
✅ ~1 hour saved nightly on POD management — automatic POD matching replaced manual job-by-job uploads
✅ ~10 hours saved per week in accounts — bulk POD distribution before invoicing replaced a manual per-job process
✅ 50–60% growth in general haulage, with just one new hire — “If we were with our previous TMS, I’m confident we’d have had to add two or three more people”
✅ Customer portal wins business — intuitive, secure, and customisable portal has become a differentiator when pitching new customers
✅ Duplication eliminated entirely — the parallel Excel planning document is gone; all operations managed in one system
What’s next?
For Premier Logistics, the next chapter is already underway. The recently acquired WT Transport business is currently being onboarded to Qargo, with a go-live planned for the first week of July. It’s a significant milestone — not just logistically, but strategically. “We want to have visibility of their work and visibility of our work, and start creating efficiencies across the whole operation,” says Macauley. “And have that shared service for both sets of customers.”
Alongside the WT Transport rollout, the team is working to connect their warehouse management system to Qargo via API — meaning jobs created in the warehouse will flow directly into the TMS without any manual intervention.
For a business growing at the rate Premier Logistics is, the prospect of a system that gets smarter as they scale isn’t just appealing — it’s essential. “AI is definitely here to stay. And I think Qargo is the right partner to help us figure out what to do with it.”
Final thoughts
Two and a half years in, Macauley’s view of Qargo went from strength to strength.
“We are confident that Qargo is the best TMS provider out there. If people haven’t done the switch, they should definitely consider it.”