Drayford vs MacroPoint: Dedicated Tracking vs. Tracking Inside Your TMS
TL;DR: MacroPoint (Descartes MacroPoint) is a real-time freight visibility platform — it tracks shipments and nothing else. Drayford is a full freight broker TMS that includes shipment tracking alongside dispatch, carrier onboarding, documents, and invoicing. Brokerages paying for MacroPoint plus a separate TMS can consolidate both into one system.
What is MacroPoint?
MacroPoint is a real-time load tracking and freight visibility platform owned by Descartes. Freight brokers and shippers use it to monitor shipment locations and automate status updates to their customers. It is a point solution focused entirely on visibility.
What is Drayford?
Drayford is a transportation management system built specifically for freight brokerages. It combines carrier onboarding with FMCSA verification, load dispatch, shipment tracking, document management, and invoicing in one platform.
How do Drayford and MacroPoint differ?
Visibility point solution vs. integrated platform
MacroPoint answers one question: where is the truck? It does that job at scale, but everything around the tracking — the load record, the carrier relationship, the documents, the invoice — lives in other software. Drayford's position is that tracking data is most useful when it lives on the load itself, next to the carrier assignment, the rate confirmation, and the invoice.
How tracking works in Drayford
In Drayford, every load carries its own tracking history. Dispatchers record status updates per leg — pickup and delivery are tracked independently in Drayford's split-leg model, from dispatched through en route, arrived, loading or unloading, and delivered. GPS pings and manual updates are timestamped, and a live view shows every active load. There is no separate system to log into and no data to sync between a tracking tool and a TMS.
The cost of the patchwork
A brokerage running a general TMS plus MacroPoint pays for two platforms and maintains the connection between them. Status updates entered in one place must match the load record in the other. Drayford removes that integration by making the load record and the tracking record the same record.
Pricing
MacroPoint prices per tracked load: published pricing starts at $5 per load, with volume discounts that can bring the per-load cost down to roughly $0.40 for very high volumes, plus a flat implementation fee. A brokerage tracking a few hundred loads a month should budget tracking as a four-figure monthly line item on top of its TMS.
Which should you choose?
Brokerages that need enterprise-scale visibility networks across many modes may still evaluate a dedicated visibility platform like MacroPoint. Brokerages whose core need is tracking their own dispatched loads — in the same system where they dispatch, document, and invoice them — are the audience Drayford is built for.
Key takeaways
- MacroPoint is a Descartes-owned freight visibility and tracking point solution.
- MacroPoint does not manage loads, carriers, documents, or invoices.
- Drayford includes per-leg shipment tracking inside a full broker TMS.
- Consolidating tracking into the TMS removes duplicate data entry and a second subscription.
Sources & verification
- Descartes MacroPoint load tracking pricing — official pricing announcement
- Descartes MacroPoint recurring costs — official per-load cost breakdown
Last verified: August 2026. Product and pricing details belong to the respective vendors and may change. This comparison is published by Drayford, which sells an alternative — we aim to keep it factual and verifiable. Spot an error? Tell us on LinkedIn.