LoadPilot Users Are Being Funneled Into AscendTMS. Here's How to Migrate on Your Own Terms.

If you were on LoadPilot, you are not just dealing with a shutdown. You are dealing with an acquisition and a pre-built path into somebody else's TMS that you never actually chose.

On February 20, 2026, InMotion Global, the parent of AscendTMS, announced it had acquired LoadPilot from Dynamic Application Services, the Arizona software company that had run the LoadPilot platform for more than twenty years. According to the announcement, LoadPilot customers were directed to migrate by signing up at AscendTMS and entering the code "LoadPilot." FreightWaves reported that the LoadPilot platform would halt operations on March 25 and that its users would migrate to AscendTMS before that date. That is the first fact every LoadPilot broker needs to understand clearly. This was not a cloud provider going dark. This was a competitor buying the book of business and pointing the exit door directly at their own front door.

Technical support for LoadPilot ended on March 10, 2026, per LoadPilot's own shutdown notice. The platform went fully offline on March 25. After that date, per the company's published terms, all stored data is permanently deleted. Prepaid customers were promised prorated refunds within 14 to 30 business days of shutdown. If you had a year-long subscription and have not seen that refund yet, that is money you are owed, and you should be asking for it.

What the acquisition actually means for a small brokerage

When a competitor acquires your TMS, the migration path they build is designed to retain the customer, not to give the customer options. That is not a conspiracy theory. That is how acquisitions work. AscendTMS's own statements framed the move as giving LoadPilot customers a "forever home," and InMotion Global CEO Tim Higham told FreightWaves he has additional acquisitions in the pipeline. Read that clearly. The strategy is consolidation. If you drift into AscendTMS by default because the signup code was there and the cutoff was coming, you have made a decision without making a decision.

That might still be the right move for some brokerages. AscendTMS lists three tiers on its own pricing page as of April 2026: Basic at $69 per user per month, Premium at $119, and PRO at $149, with a 30-day free trial but no permanent free plan. It is a real product with real customers. But "this was the path of least resistance" is the worst reason to pick a TMS. You should be evaluating the platform on its own terms, just like you would have if LoadPilot had never been acquired and you were shopping from scratch.

Get your data out. Today. Not tomorrow.

If you are still holding LoadPilot exports only in email or in a folder you have not verified, stop reading and go pull them again. Here is the minimum export checklist for any small brokerage coming out of a TMS shutdown:

• Customers: full contact records, billing addresses, payment terms, credit limits, and notes
• Carriers: MC numbers, DOT numbers, contact records, insurance documents on file, notes, and preferred-lane history
• Load history: at minimum the last 24 months, with rates, lanes, equipment type, and shipper-of-record on each
• Accounting records: invoices sent, invoices paid, aging reports, and any 1099 data for carriers
• Rate history: what you charged and what you paid, by lane
• Documents: BOLs, rate confirmations, PODs, signed broker-carrier agreements, and certificates of insurance
• Email threads and notes: if your TMS stored any customer or carrier correspondence, export it or screenshot it

The reason to be aggressive about this is simple. Most of the operational value in a brokerage is not in the active loads. It is in the quiet institutional knowledge: who pays fast, who needs a temperature check at pickup, which lanes you actually make money on. That context does not come back once the database is wiped.

How to evaluate a replacement without rushing into one

Once your data is safe, you have the luxury of evaluating replacements on real criteria instead of panic. Here is how I would run that evaluation as a working broker.

Start with the terms, not the dashboard screenshots. Is the contract month-to-month or annual? Can you export your full dataset if you leave, without paying extra or filing a support ticket? Is the quoted monthly price what you actually pay, or are the useful features such as load board posting, carrier vetting, accounting, and document storage behind upsells? Those questions matter more than any demo.

Then look at fit. A brokerage running produce and reefer out of California has different needs than a dry-van shop running contract freight from the Midwest. The question is not "what TMS is best," it is "what TMS fits how I actually run loads."

Here is a fair, current snapshot of three options LoadPilot refugees are likely looking at, as of April 2026:

That is not the full universe. Aljex, Tailwind, Alvys, Rose Rocket, and others are all in the market. But those are three a small brokerage can realistically evaluate in a week without hiring a consultant.

The broker filter — what I would actually do

From where I sit running reefer lanes out of California, the LoadPilot shutdown is the kind of moment where brokerages either upgrade their operation or drift. Capterra's verified reviews of LoadPilot flagged missing QuickBooks integration and gaps in load board connectivity as recurring complaints from former users. If that was your experience, do not replace LoadPilot with something that has the same gaps. Replace it with a platform that closes them.

The brokers who handle this well will treat the migration as a forced upgrade. They will pull their data, evaluate two or three real options, make a deliberate pick, and be operational inside two weeks with cleaner records than they had on LoadPilot. The brokers who handle it badly will click the AscendTMS signup link because it was in the email, realize six months in that the pricing or the workflow does not fit, and then do this whole exercise a second time.

Pick once. Pick on purpose.

20-2 Dispatch was built for small brokerages navigating exactly this kind of market: broker-first CRM, TMS, and accounting in one place, with your data portable and your contract month-to-month. If that is what you are looking for, you know where to find us.