TOVRConcepts

Reputation & reliability

TOVR tracks how reliable the companies and contacts you deal with are — carrier vetting, aggregate partner statistics, and per-contact intelligence. Reputation is about reliability, distinct from the legal compliance gate.

Beyond whether a chain is legal (compliance), a dispatcher needs to know whether a counterparty is reliable — will this carrier actually perform, will this shipper pay, is this contact worth the call. TOVR tracks reputation at three levels. Reputation informs who you choose to work with; it is a separate dimension from the legal-feasibility gate.

Carrier vetting

Before you rely on a carrier, TOVR checks its basics — VAT/identity validity (vies_status: verified, unverified, or unavailable when the VIES service itself couldn't be reached) and whether it has been vetted (vetted_at). Vetting is the first, cheapest reputation signal: it weeds out entities that can't be transacted with before any deal-making effort is spent.

Partner reputation

For the companies you actually work with, TOVR aggregates performance into partner statistics. Carrier and shipper partner stats (carrier_partner_stats_v, shipper_partner_stats_v) and company reviews (company_reviews) roll up history into a reliability picture — surfaced on the Market directory, where you browse carriers and shippers and see how they've performed. This is the company-level reputation you consult when picking a partner for a lane.

Contact-level reputation

The sharpest reputation signal is per contact, not per company: how a specific person negotiates and whether deals with them close. TOVR learns this as contact intelligence — win rate, typical counters, common objections, price sensitivity, and a reliability score that compounds as you interact.

Contact intelligence is owned by Procurement & outreach — it's the memory that makes the dispatcher get sharper over time. This page just places it in the reputation picture; that page explains how it's built and used.

Reputation vs compliance

Keep the two dimensions distinct:

  • Compliance (legal) — may this chain run? Cabotage, hours-of-service, equipment. A hard gate; see Compliance.
  • Reputation (reliability) — should I work with this party? Vetting, partner stats, contact intelligence. A judgment input, not a gate.

A chain can be perfectly legal and still involve a counterparty you'd rather avoid — reputation is what tells you.

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