BREAKING: Popular TMS system crashes, no updated ETA provided. Is it time to worry yet?

Freight Broker Live learned today that a popular hosted Transportation Management Software has crashed and they do not have an ETA for when they will be up.

Tailwind Transportation Software reportedly started showing signs yesterday that something was wrong. Users reported that the software was very slow to respond, and this morning, the software seemed to crash completely with users unable to even reach a login screen. 

According to the Tailwind website, they “help small and mid-sized trucking companies and freight brokers control the chaos of running a freight business-managing trucks and drivers, compliance, tracking, dispatching, administration and more.”

Tailwind seems to lay the blame on Microsoft Azure,  with a message on their contact us page stating the “platform that hosts the Tailwind TMS application – is experiencing an outage, which is limiting access to the Tailwind TMS” and linked to a third party outage map that shows  outages across the United States. Both the support and sales phone numbers ring with no answer at Tailwind.

Freight Broker Live was eventually able to get in contact with Tailwind representatives who confirmed all clients were unable to access the system and confirmed their “Senior Dev team members are working with MSFT to get this issue resolved ASAP.” The last update received from Tailwind reportedly from Microsoft was that the outage had spread from two regions, to eight regions, possibly showing signs that this is only the beginning of a problem that might be growing.

With that said, Freight Broker Live was able to get in contact with a Microsoft technical support representative, who advised there have not been any reported outages that they were aware of.

Without an ETA on when the software may be up, users of the Tailwind software are starting  to express their concerns. One logistics company owner is losing his patience. Roman Brichka, the owner of Tweet Express, LLC  told Freight Broker Live he thought it would be convenient to have one TMS provider for both his carrier and brokerage segments. He might be rethinking that now.

In the past month there have been numerous freight technology providers who have experienced software issues. Truckstop.com, one of the most popular load board providers was the victim of a ransomware attack, and has experienced frequent outages since then. In November. 2019, Omnitracs suffered an outage that rendered as many as 75k ELD’s useless, causing drivers to revert to paper logs, and just a few days ago, one of the Nation’s leading fuel card providers crashed causing thousands of drivers to not be able to fuel. While tech is evolving, companies are starting to become more apprehensive each day.

“Our operations are brought to a halt when our load boards, fuel cards, and TMS systems stop working. We can’t perform basic support functions at the office and our drivers get stranded at fuel islands and truckstops,” said Brichka. “The cloud-based technologies that are supposed to streamline our operations have been failing us tremendously in the last few months. I am realizing that we are very vulnerable and stand to lose a lot by relying solely on such technologies.”

This is a breaking story and we will update as new information becomes available.