Loadlink has been Canada's best-known load board since 1990, and on domestic Canada freight it has real depth. If your freight touches Mexico as well as Canada, here is an honest look at where Cargado is different and where Loadlink is still the right answer.
| Loadlink | Cargado | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Domestic Canada freight | Mexico and Canada freight, cross-border and domestic |
| Network | Paid-subscriber load board | Invite-only: both sides vetted before anyone posts or bids |
| Rate data | Rate Index, availability varies by tier | 12,000+ Mexico and Canada lanes from real carrier bids |
| Languages | English and French | English, Spanish and French with instant chat translation |
| Carrier cost | Paid plans, quoted by a specialist | Join and bid at no cost |
| Users per plan | Priced by plan | Unlimited users on every plan |
Brokers usually come looking for a Loadlink alternative after a lane goes quiet. The subscription line item is rarely what started it.
Picture the usual Thursday: a load needs a dry van out of Brampton. Somebody pulls the carrier list, blasts twenty emails, and gets two replies. One carrier is already committed. The other quotes a number with no relationship to what the customer approved. Two hours are gone, the load is still open, and the rep is back to the phone.
Cargado runs the opposite motion. You post the load once, and vetted carriers who actually run that corridor bid on it. You compare what came back, message the carrier you want in the same place, and cover it. The work that used to be twenty outbound emails becomes one posting and a short list of real bids.
There is a second motion most brokers never get from a legacy load board, and it matters more than the spot side. A load is ad hoc coverage. A lane is a procurement event. Post a lane and you carry the full structure with it: date range, loads per day, days of the week, commodity, equipment, and requirements. That is how you source dedicated capacity for a schedule instead of re-bidding the same freight every week. Brokers who only ever post loads are using half the product.
Cargado is an invite-only marketplace with vetted members on both sides: 250+ vetted brokers, 3PLs and forwarders and 2,100+ vetted carriers running 215,000+ trucks, across 12,000+ lanes covered. Every plan includes unlimited users, so the whole team works in it rather than the two people who happened to get seats.
Loadlink has been matching Canada freight since 1990 and describes itself as Canada's leader in load and freight-matching services. For freight moving Toronto to Montreal, Calgary to Vancouver, or across the Canada interior, the depth behind that claim is real.
A few other facts worth knowing: the network is decades old, which means carrier familiarity and habit are on its side. The site and product run in English and French, which matters for Quebec freight. It publishes a Rate Index for truckload rating. It has an install base that most of your carrier partners already log into every morning.
None of that is going away because you added a second network. Plenty of brokers run both.
Loadlink does not publish prices. Its carrier plan and broker plan pages list tier names and what each tier includes, and every one of them routes you to a product specialist for a quote. Any dollar figure you find in a forum thread is one company's recollection of one quote, so we are not going to repeat those numbers here. Ask them directly and get your own.
What we can be specific about is our side of it:
The reason carrier pricing matters to a broker is simple. A network where carriers pay is a network filtered by who can justify the spend. A network where they do not is filtered by vetting alone, which is the filter you actually want.
Mexico and Canada in one network. Cargado is the only network built to span both. If you are covering Laredo, TX southbound on Monday and Emerson northbound on Tuesday, that is one login, one carrier network, one set of rates. Most brokers running Canada freight are also being asked about Mexico, and the reverse is increasingly true.
Every carrier is vetted before they can bid. Carriers are verified through FMCSA (the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) and SICT (Mexico's federal transport authority), with trusted-trader status tracked on the profile: FAST (Free and Secure Trade), PIP (Partners in Protection, the CBSA program), and CTPAT. When a load needs a FAST-approved driver for the dedicated lanes at the border, you can see who qualifies before you award it.
Bilingual chat with instant translation. Message a carrier in English, they read it in Spanish, they reply in Spanish, you read it in English. The dispatcher in Monterrey and the dispatcher in Mississauga work the same thread. Language stops being the reason a load sits.
CAD and USD handled natively. Canada freight quotes in Canadian dollars and U.S. freight quotes in U.S. dollars, and the platform handles both rather than making somebody keep a conversion in a spreadsheet.
Toronto to Chicago. Montreal into the Northeast. Winnipeg to Chicago reefer, where protect-from-freezing means you need reefer and heated capacity through the winter and not just a temperature-controlled trailer on paper. Brampton to Calgary domestic. Southern Ontario into western New York. British Columbia south into Washington.
On every one of those, the structured detail rides with the posting. Crossing, equipment, whether it is a PARS move northbound into Canada or a PAPS move southbound into the United States, CUSMA documentation requirements, drop or live, temperature range. Carriers bid against the real requirement instead of calling to ask three questions first.
The brokers who get the most out of Cargado are the ones whose customers keep asking about the other side of the map: Mexico volume they have to quote blind, Canada lanes where two replies out of twenty emails has become normal, or a growing team that keeps running into seat limits.
Bring three lanes you are struggling to cover and we will walk them with you. Carrier access is at no cost.
Cargado is an invite-only marketplace for Mexico and Canada freight where every broker and carrier is vetted before joining. Brokers post loads for spot coverage and post lanes to run procurement events for dedicated capacity, and every plan includes unlimited users.
Loadlink does not publish prices. Its carrier and broker plan pages list tier names and included features, then route you to a product specialist for a quote, so the only accurate number is the one they give you directly. Dollar figures circulating in forums are individual quotes rather than published pricing.
No. Carrier access is at no cost, including market visibility, which is how the carrier pool keeps compounding. Brokers, 3PLs and forwarders pay a value-based subscription that includes unlimited users.
Both. Cargado covers freight moving between the United States, Mexico and Canada as well as freight moving within Mexico and within Canada, so a Brampton–Calgary move and a Toronto–Chicago move live in the same network.
Every carrier is verified through FMCSA and SICT before they can bid, with FAST, PIP and CTPAT status tracked on the carrier profile alongside insurance and safety data. You can see which carriers hold trusted-trader status before awarding a load that needs it.
Yes, and most brokers do exactly that. Keep the incumbent for domestic freight where it is strong, and route Mexico and Canada freight through Cargado where the vetted network and the bilingual workflow do more work.