Frequently Asked Questions

MachShip is an independent supply chain orchestration platform. It connects your carriers and systems in one place, turns your orders into consignments, picks the right carrier and service for each one, and tracks every shipment through to delivery. More than 10,000 businesses run their shipping on MachShip, from single operators through to enterprises operating at national scale. We’re Australian, privately owned, and we’ve been doing this since 2014.

Neither. MachShip is an independent, Australian-owned software company. We don’t move your goods and we don’t sell you rates. You bring your own carrier accounts, your own rates and your own contracts, and MachShip gives you one platform to manage them all. That independence is the point. Because we’re not owned by a 4PL provider or a carrier, we’ve got no competing agenda and no reason to push your shipments one way over another.

A transport management system runs a carrier’s operation: routing, scheduling, and allocating jobs to vehicles and drivers. MachShip sits a layer above that. It takes your orders, turns them into consignments, finds the right carrier and service for each shipment, books it, and pulls tracking back so you always know where things are. The two work together. MachShip passes consignment data down to the carrier’s TMS, and tracking flows back up to you. It isn’t a case of one or the other.

MachShip launched in 2014 and is a privately owned Australian company, serving customers across Australia and New Zealand. More than 10,000 businesses run on the platform today.

MachShip connects with 500+ carriers, and you can add more whenever you need to. Most businesses run several carriers side by side, and setting up a new one is straightforward: connect the account, import the rates, define your service rules, and your team can start quoting and booking with it straight away. We’re adding new carrier integrations all the time, so if there’s one you use that isn’t connected yet, it usually can be.

No. You bring your own carrier accounts, rates and contracts to the platform. We work with businesses that have a direct relationship with their carriers, and MachShip simply makes those relationships easier to manage in one place. If you’re after rates themselves, that’s a conversation for a 4PL provider, and we can point you toward one in our network.

You do, start to finish. MachShip doesn’t touch your carrier relationships, your contracts or your pricing. Our connection to your carriers is purely technical: passing order data through to create consignments, generating labels that meet each carrier’s specs, and pulling tracking back so you’ve got visibility. You keep the relationships. We just make them easier to run.

Yes. MachShip calls this receiver paid, and it’s handled within the platform, so you can book freight against a customer’s carrier account when that’s how the arrangement works.

Yes. Every quote includes the surcharges that apply, factored in at the point of quoting and consignment creation. We account for the surcharges relevant to what you’re shipping, the carrier you’re using and where it’s going, so the price you see is the price that applies. No surprises after the fact.

It depends on the carrier. For some, rates update automatically through an API feed or rate card upload. For others, updating rates and surcharges is quick to do yourself inside MachShip. Either way, your team works from current pricing without chasing it across multiple carrier portals.

We’re always growing the network, so introduce us. New carriers take a little longer to bring on, and the exact timeframe depends on the carrier, but we’re set up to add new ones and we do it regularly. If you rely on a carrier we haven’t connected yet, that’s rarely a dealbreaker.

Yes, as an opt-in feature. If you’re sending separate orders to the same address on the same day, MachShip can automatically combine them into a single consignment, provided the sending and receiving locations match. That saves you paying a carrier’s basic charge multiple times over, and it cuts down on paperwork. Think of it like sharing a taxi: three people heading to the same place can each pay for their own, or split one fare. One customer estimated this feature alone saves them around $250,000 a year. If you’re already with us and want it switched on, just reach out to support.

Yes. You can ship internationally, both to and from Australia, through our international carriers, and we’re adding more international options over time. The experience is the same as your domestic freight: one platform, one workflow, full visibility.

Yes, you can consign most dangerous goods. DG items are classified by a UN code that sets their class and handling requirements (lithium-ion batteries, for example, fall under UN 3480). MachShip stays current with dangerous goods legislation, UN codes and packaging classes, and gives you the documentation to consign these items correctly. One thing to note: we support a wide range of dangerous goods, but we don’t currently handle the special exemptions that apply to Limited Quantities.

Yes. Alongside the price of a consignment, MachShip shows the expected delivery time. These ETAs come from the carriers themselves and reflect their own transit schedules, which we keep current through regularly updated zone sets. So you know what a shipment costs and roughly when it’ll land, in the same view, before you book.

Yes. MachShip pulls tracking back from your carriers so you’ve got one place to see where everything is, rather than logging into separate carrier portals. Where a carrier supports it, that includes proof of delivery, so the record comes back to you automatically instead of you chasing it.

Yes. Whether you ship from one site or a dozen, MachShip gives every location the same carriers, the same business rules and the same workflow. Freight going out of a regional depot is handled exactly like freight leaving your main warehouse, which keeps things consistent and makes it far easier to manage as you grow.

Yes. MachShip supports returns as part of managing the full delivery experience, so a return runs through the same platform as the original shipment rather than sitting in a separate process. For eCommerce businesses especially, that keeps the post-purchase experience joined up.

Quick. Once you’ve given us your carrier account details and rate cards, we’ll usually have you up and running within 5 to 10 business days. The biggest variable is how fast we get what we need from you, so the more promptly you send through rate cards and respond to setup queries, the sooner you’re live. We’ve seen it done in five.

You’re not handed a login and left to it. A dedicated onboarding and integration team works with you from setup through to go-live, getting your carriers, rates and business rules configured the way your operation runs. The process is deliberately clear: we tell you exactly what we need from you and when, so there are no surprises and you always know where things are up to. Implementation is the part most people worry about, and it’s the part we’ve done thousands of times.

Yes. We make sure your team knows how to use the platform before you go live, not after. Because everyone works in the same interface regardless of which carrier they’re booking with, there’s only one system to learn rather than a different portal for every carrier, which keeps training short and gets people confident fast.

Yes, on request. You can also get an API token and access to our API documentation, so your development team can test how MachShip connects to your order management and eCommerce systems before you commit to going live.

Through onboarding you work directly with our local onboarding and integration team, so getting set up is hands-on rather than self-serve. Once you’re live, ongoing support runs through dedicated channels, with separate paths for integration questions and day-to-day platform support so your query reaches the right people. You’re not left to figure the platform out alone.

For our pre-built integrations, we can usually have you tested and connected within about 7 business days. If you’re running a custom or in-house ERP or WMS, we can build for that too, the timeframe just depends on the specifics. Get in touch and we’ll scope out what’s involved.

Yes. MachShip has a fully featured, accessible API, so connecting to your existing systems is straightforward, even for platforms we haven’t integrated with before. The platform is built to fit your workflow rather than force you to change it, so a system we haven’t seen yet isn’t a barrier.

Yes, and yes. MachShip’s API is fully featured and fully documented, so your development team has what it needs to build the connection and test it properly. You authenticate with a token, switch a user into test mode to trial consignments without sending them to a carrier, and move from test to live without changing URLs or credentials. For the full technical detail, endpoints and integration guides, your developers can head to our API documentation.

Most of them. MachShip connects the systems that generate your orders, your ERP, warehouse management and eCommerce platforms, to the carriers that move your freight, through pre-built connectors for common systems and APIs for everything else. The point is that your orders flow straight into freight management without anyone rekeying data.

No. MachShip runs on month-to-month subscriptions with no lock-in. You can cancel any time with 30 days’ notice. The product earns its keep month to month, so there’s no multi-year commitment holding you in.

Pricing is built around how you use the platform, so what you pay reflects your operation rather than a one-size box. Some businesses start with a single site and a couple of carriers and scale up from there as they grow. For a breakdown of plans and what’s included, head to our pricing page, and if you’d like it walked through against your specific setup, book a demo and we’ll talk it through.