Bridgeway Transportation runs things at scale.

The 1,400-truck fleet processes 60 to 70 owner-operator onboardings a month across asset and brokerage operations. Their equipment department, safety team, onboarding groups, and dispatch teams all depend on real-time visibility into where every candidate stands. And their recruiters are expected to move fast without dropping anything.

What they needed was a platform that could handle complexity without creating it.

"We took a risk on Double Nickel," said Reese Ryabyy, Senior Vice President of Operations. "A smaller platform, a little bit less widely known. Could they actually deliver what we needed them to deliver for a fleet our size? That little bit of a risk gamble paid off tenfold."

The Problem: A Process Built Around the Wrong Tool

Before Double Nickel, Bridgeway had spent years bolting solutions onto a TMS that was never designed for recruiting. The result was what Reese called the Winchester house: a system that kept growing but never quite worked the way they needed.

Everything was manual. Applications were incomplete. Drivers had to be chased for documents. Reporting required hours of weekly effort just to understand where the pipeline stood. And the team had molded their process around the software's limitations instead of the other way around.

"It was a clunky process. It was very manual. Not a lot of automation, not a lot of AI integration," Reese explained. "When we started selecting vendors, it was more than just to find a vendor. It was also to reinvent how we do onboarding and contractor recruiting."

Rodney McGee, Director of Contractor Operations, felt it on the ground every day.

"The nuts and bolts of the operation was affected by the application system software. We molded our process around that versus potentially it being vice versa. We tremendously fought and fought and fought with owner operators and drivers to complete the full application. It was a major struggle."

Why Double Nickel

When Bridgeway started evaluating vendors, they were looking for more than a feature checklist. They needed a platform that could simplify a genuinely complex process, close the gaps in their recruiting coverage, and give their team the visibility to make real-time decisions.

Three things moved the needle.

Workflow clarity. As complex as owner-operator recruiting and onboarding is with all the background checks, VOEs, and compliance requirements, Double Nickel laid it out in a way Bridgeway's team could actually follow. "I thought Double Nickel laid it out in a much simpler fashion that allowed to present what needs to get done at what point in time with a lot more clarity than we had," Reese said.

AI recruiting coverage. Bridgeway had been considering adding second and third shift recruiters to keep up with overnight lead volume. Double Nickel's AI recruiting agent changed that math. "I'll be honest, I was pessimistic in it, but it's working. We didn't have to add bodies and we're getting great success with scheduled appointments and recruiters taking over all the finite details afterwards."

Real-time reporting. With multiple departments depending on up-to-date candidate status, clunky manual reporting was costing the team hours every week. Double Nickel's dashboard gave them the visibility they needed without the manual work. "Having up-to-date information, real time information on where each candidate is in a high volume environment is invaluable for us."

For Rodney, the decision came down to the driver experience. After testing the platform in a sandbox environment, watching the application process from the driver's side was the confirmation he needed. "We're not negatively impacting the driver experience for us to be more efficient."

The Results: Faster, Leaner, and Better for Drivers

Within their first year on Double Nickel, Bridgeway has seen measurable improvement across every part of the operation.

Onboarding time cut from 3 weeks to 10 days. At their previous pace, onboarding a truck and driver took two and a half to three weeks. They now average 10 days, and in many cases complete the process in seven or fewer. All of this is done virtually, without physical onboarding sites.

4 to 5 FTEs freed up to focus elsewhere. The efficiencies pulled out of the onboarding process have given Bridgeway the capacity to redeploy people into higher-value work. "It's four or five full-time employees that we could shift into other roles as a result of the efficiencies we've pulled out of our onboarding platform," Reese said.

VOE automation now at 40 to 50%, with zero human involvement. Employment verifications that once required manual outreach are now running automatically, with nearly half returning without anyone touching them. "Now 40, 50% of our VOEs are coming back without human involvement."

Weekly reporting time cut from 4 to 6 hours to under 2. Rodney's team can now identify where leads are converting, reallocate budget to high-performing sources, and track recruiter performance without a full-day manual pull. "This was something I would spend anywhere between four and six hours a week. We're now down to under two hours."

Overnight applications ready for a decision within the first hour of business. The voice agent and automated qualification workflows mean that by the time the recruiting team arrives in the morning, applications that came in overnight are already partially processed. Driver's licenses, med cards, and VOEs may already be in motion before anyone picks up the phone.

The impact on the driver experience has been just as meaningful. Katie Springob, Director of Contractor Experience, described what the process now looks like from the driver's side.

"Within seconds of applying, we've already requested their med card by text and they can just text it back. Same with the CDL. We've started their VOEs. By the time they actually get on the phone with the recruiter, they can actually have a conversation about what they're looking for instead of us having to ask a bunch of questions."

What Onboarding With Double Nickel Actually Looked Like

For a fleet as large and operationally complex as Bridgeway, a platform switch is not a small decision. The stakes were high enough that the team was cautious going in.

What they found was a partner that showed up before, during, and after launch.

"Double Nickel really took time to do a business analysis ahead of time to understand what we were currently doing, help us understand how we could best do that in Double Nickel without pushing us too far out of our comfort zone so that we didn't lose user adoption," Katie said. "From before launch, during launch, when they were on site with us for two to three days, really making sure that from a technical standpoint, a user adoption standpoint, a training standpoint, everything was set."

The support did not stop after go-live. Rodney noted that Double Nickel's responsiveness to the team's needs created a culture of confidence that extended beyond leadership.

"That residual of your being open to helping us solve problems is kicked down to the employee level where they feel that they have a vested interest in this platform as well."

A Re-Energized Recruiting Floor

Beyond the numbers, Reese keeps coming back to what the shift has meant for the people doing the work.

When Bridgeway opened up the onboarding workflow to their recruiters, something changed. Recruiters who had always relied on handoffs to specialty groups could now take a driver from application through onboarding themselves, while on the phone.

"Man, onboarding used to slow me down. Now I can just handle it myself while I have the driver on the phone," Reese recalled hearing from his team. "The people that are having the conversations with the customer, the driver, feel like they have more control to get stuff done. And that's huge for us."

It compounds. Efficiency gains and a better driver experience do not trade off against each other. They build on each other.

"You're outside of the box thinkers, you're innovators, you're always looking for what's the next thing that's going to help us improve," Reese said. "I'm super happy with the decision, super confident in the fact that we made the right choice here and it's going to pay dividends as we continue to partner on a deeper level."

Bridgeway Transportation moves freight across the country. Double Nickel helps make sure the owner-operators who power that operation get onboarded faster, with less friction, and a better experience from the first application.

Want to see what that looks like for your fleet? Book a call with our team.

Bridgeway Transportation is a 1,400-truck asset-based and brokerage fleet specializing in owner-operator recruiting and onboarding.