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Quickstart: Connect a Driverless Trucking API to Your TMS in 30 Minutes

mmidways

2026-01-23

9 min read

Hands-on 30‑minute quickstart to connect an autonomous trucking API (Aurora-style) to your TMS — webhook handlers, OAuth2, event mapping, and code samples.

Quickstart: Connect a Driverless Trucking API to Your TMS in 30 Minutes

Hook: If your team is losing time cobbling together manual tenders, error-prone dispatch steps, and blind spots across carrier APIs, this quickstart gets you from zero to a working integration with an autonomous trucking provider (think Aurora-style APIs) and your TMS in 30 minutes — complete with webhook handlers, authentication, and event mapping.

Why this matters in 2026

By late 2025 and into 2026, major TMS platforms and autonomous trucking providers accelerated API-first integrations: enterprises expect real-time tendering, booking, and telematics for driverless capacity. With pilots and early commercial rollouts (notably Aurora’s early links to TMS platforms), freight teams are demanding the same developer-grade automation and observability they use elsewhere in their stack. That means your TMS must support secure API tendering, reliable webhooks, idempotent operations, and end-to-end tracing. For hybrid observability patterns see Cloud Native Observability.

"The ability to tender autonomous loads through our existing TMS dashboard has been a meaningful operational improvement." — Rami Abdeljaber, Russell Transport (customer commentary on early TMS–autonomous links)

What you’ll build

This guide shows a minimal, production-minded flow to:

Authenticate with a driverless trucking provider using OAuth2 client credentials
Tender a load from your TMS to the carrier API
Handle carrier webhooks (booking accept/decline, status updates, exceptions)
Map carrier events to your TMS lifecycle (tendered > accepted > dispatched > delivered)
Instrument observability, retry and idempotency for reliability

Prerequisites (5 minutes)

A TMS account with API access or a TMS sandbox (McLeod, for example, provides APIs to customers)
Developer account with the autonomous trucking provider (client_id/client_secret) and webhook endpoint registration
A small Node.js or Python runtime to run webhook handlers (we provide both samples)
ngrok or a public endpoint for local testing

High-level architecture (1 minute)

Flow: TMS → (Tender API) → Carrier API → (Webhooks) → TMS webhook handler → (status update API) → TMS

Key signals to propagate: request_id (correlation), tender_id (TMS), carrier_booking_id, route_id, geolocation updates, proof-of-delivery (POD).

30-minute step-by-step

(0–3 min) Get credentials and URLs
From carrier: OAuth2 token endpoint, tendering endpoint, webhook registration page, and the webhook signing secret or public key. From TMS: API to update load status or an inbound webhook if your TMS accepts external events.
(3–8 min) Exchange client credentials for a token
Most carrier APIs use OAuth2 client credentials for machine-to-machine flows. Example curl:
```
curl -u 'CLIENT_ID:CLIENT_SECRET' \
  -X POST 'https://carrier.example.com/oauth/token' \
  -d 'grant_type=client_credentials&scope=transportation:api'
```
Response contains access_token and expires_in. Cache and refresh tokens server-side.

(8–14 min) Tender a load (TMS → Carrier)

Format a tender payload with required fields (origin/destination lat/long or PCS, weight, dims, earliest_pickup, latest_delivery, documents). Always include a correlation_id (UUID) from your TMS.

curl -X POST 'https://carrier.example.com/api/v1/tenders' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "correlation_id": "tms-1234-5678",
    "tender": {
      "reference": "TMS-LOAD-1001",
      "origin": {"lat": 33.7490, "lon": -84.3880, "address": "Atlanta, GA"},
      "destination": {"lat": 34.0522, "lon": -118.2437, "address": "Los Angeles, CA"},
      "weight_kg": 18000,
      "pickup_window": {"earliest": "2026-02-01T08:00:00Z", "latest": "2026-02-01T18:00:00Z"}
    }
  }'

Carrier responds with 202 Accepted and a carrier_booking_id or immediate accept/decline.

(14–20 min) Register and verify webhooks

Set your webhook URL in the carrier portal or via API. Implement signature verification to ensure authenticity. Carriers typically use HMAC-SHA256 over the payload with a shared secret. Example Node.js Express handler:

const express = require('express')
const crypto = require('crypto')
const app = express()
app.use(express.json({verify: (req, res, buf) => req.rawBody = buf}))

const SIGNING_SECRET = process.env.CARRIER_WEBHOOK_SECRET

function verifySignature(req) {
  const sigHeader = req.headers['x-carrier-signature'] || ''
  const expected = crypto.createHmac('sha256', SIGNING_SECRET)
    .update(req.rawBody)
    .digest('hex')
  return crypto.timingSafeEqual(Buffer.from(sigHeader), Buffer.from(expected))
}

app.post('/webhooks/carrier', (req, res) => {
  if (!verifySignature(req)) return res.status(401).send('invalid signature')
  const event = req.body
  // process event (see mapping below)
  res.status(200).send('ok')
})

app.listen(8080)

For Python/Flask, you can use hmac and request.get_data() similarly.

(20–26 min) Implement event mapping and idempotency
Carrier webhooks will include events like tender_accepted, tender_declined, pickup_started, location_update, delivered, exception. Map these to your TMS lifecycle and ensure idempotent processing using the carrier event id.

Sample mapping
- tender.created → TMS: Tendered (create local tender record)
- tender.accepted → TMS: Accepted (update carrier_booking_id, set scheduled dispatch)
- pickup.started → TMS: In transit
- location.update → TMS: Telemetry event (store for ETA & tracking)
- delivered → TMS: Delivered (attach POD, finalize invoicing)
- exception.occurred → TMS: Exception workflow (create alert, auto-tender fallback)
Use an event store or lightweight database table keyed by carrier_event_id to avoid double-processing when carriers retry webhooks. Governance and scaling patterns for small connectors are discussed in the micro-apps at scale playbook (see guide).
(26–30 min) Observability, retries and go-live checks
Instrument traces and metrics:
- Emit a trace/span for the tender API call; attach your TMS correlation_id and carrier_booking_id
- Log webhook receipt with event type, carrier_event_id, and latency
- Implement exponential backoff for POST failures from your webhook handler when calling your TMS update endpoints
Quick checks: send a test tender, simulate accept and location updates, validate TMS state transitions, and ensure retries are handled. For tooling that helps balance cost and telemetry volume, check top observability and cost tools (cloud cost & observability).

Detailed code samples

Node.js: Tender + webhook handler (minimal)

// tender.js
const fetch = require('node-fetch')
const { v4: uuidv4 } = require('uuid')

async function getToken() {
  const res = await fetch('https://carrier.example.com/oauth/token', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Authorization': 'Basic ' + Buffer.from(process.env.CLIENT_ID + ':' + process.env.CLIENT_SECRET).toString('base64'), 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
    body: 'grant_type=client_credentials'
  })
  return (await res.json()).access_token
}

async function tenderLoad(tmsLoad) {
  const token = await getToken()
  const correlation_id = 'tms-' + tmsLoad.id
  const payload = { correlation_id, tender: tmsLoad }
  const res = await fetch('https://carrier.example.com/api/v1/tenders', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + token, 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify(payload)
  })
  return await res.json()
}

module.exports = { tenderLoad }

Python: Flask webhook handler with signature verification

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
import hmac
import hashlib
import os

app = Flask(__name__)
SIGNING_SECRET = os.environ.get('CARRIER_WEBHOOK_SECRET')

@app.route('/webhooks/carrier', methods=['POST'])
def carrier_webhook():
    raw = request.get_data()
    sig = request.headers.get('X-Carrier-Signature', '')
    expected = hmac.new(SIGNING_SECRET.encode(), raw, hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
    if not hmac.compare_digest(sig, expected):
        return 'invalid signature', 401
    event = request.json
    # idempotency check (pseudo): if seen(event['id']): return 200
    process_event(event)
    return jsonify({'status': 'ok'})

def process_event(event):
    # map event['type'] to TMS calls
    pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(port=8080)

Advanced considerations (post-30 minutes)

Security & governance

Prefer mutual TLS or signed JWTs for high-value flows; rotate webhook signing secrets regularly
Record consent, data residency, and PDP/PII processing rules for telemetry and geolocation data
Apply RBAC in your TMS so only authorized workflows can tender autos

Idempotency and retries

Carrier systems will retry webhooks — design for idempotency. Use a dedupe table keyed by carrier_event_id and track delivery attempts. For outgoing tender calls, include an idempotency-key header with a UUID to let the carrier de-duplicate requests.

Observability and SLAs

Connect traces across systems using a correlation_id pattern. For example:

TMS assigns correlation_id on tender (UUID)
Carrier returns carrier_booking_id and echoes correlation_id in async webhooks
Logs, metrics, and traces include both IDs for rapid troubleshooting

Use OpenTelemetry and hybrid observability to push traces to your APM and tag spans with carrier name, environment, and correlation_id.

Multi-cloud & hybrid deployment

If your TMS is a cloud-hosted SaaS, run webhook handlers in a secure, highly available endpoint (serverless functions with VPC egress or containerized microservice behind a load balancer). For on-prem TMS, use a secure relay (Midways-style connector or reverse-proxy / compact gateway) to avoid exposing internal networks.

Exception handling and fallback automation

When exceptions occur (e.g., route restrictions, weather exceptions), implement automated fallback: auto-tender to alternate carriers, open a ticket in your ops tool, or route to a human workflow in the TMS. Use business rules to decide whether to escalate.

Event mapping cheat-sheet

Keep this mapping as a JSON schema in your integration repo so both product and ops teams can agree on semantics.

{
  "tender.created": "TMS:TENDERED",
  "tender.accepted": "TMS:ACCEPTED",
  "tender.declined": "TMS:DECLINED",
  "pickup.started": "TMS:IN_TRANSIT",
  "location.update": "TMS:LOCATION_UPDATE",
  "exception.occurred": "TMS:EXCEPTION",
  "delivered": "TMS:DELIVERED"
}

Real-world notes & best practices from 2026 adopters

Teams using driverless capacity report fastest ROI when tendering is embedded in existing TMS workflows so ops staff don’t need new consoles.
Low-latency location streaming (every 30–60s) improves ETA accuracy for long-haul driverless routes — but balance telemetry frequency with cost and privacy rules.
Many early adopters (including McLeod customers) demanded robust test harnesses and replay tools to simulate carrier events before production rollout.

Testing checklist

Sandbox tender → ensure 202/201 responses and validate carrier_booking_id persistence
Webhook replay from carrier sandbox → idempotency and state transitions should be correct
Simulate network failures to verify retry/backoff and alerting
End-to-end test: tender → accept → pickup → location updates → delivered

Troubleshooting common gotchas

Missing correlation IDs: If carrier events don't echo your correlation_id, rely on matching by pickup windows and route attributes, but push for API changes—correlation_id is critical.
Signature mismatches: Ensure body normalization (no extra whitespace changes) and use the raw request bytes when computing HMAC.
Time skew: If carriers include a timestamp in signature validation, keep your servers’ clocks synced (NTP). For edge-aware orchestration and latency-sensitive deployments, consult edge-aware orchestration playbooks (edge-aware orchestration).

Future-proofing and trends to watch (2026+)

Standardized freight events: Expect industry consortiums to publish standard event schemas for autonomous fleets to simplify integrations across TMS vendors.
Federated identity & verifiable credentials: Carriers may move to JWT-based assertions for capability and safety certificates.
Edge observability: More carriers will push telemetry via secure edge brokers; plan for stream processing and aggregation for ETAs. See hybrid and edge observability patterns (observability) and edge-first cost-aware strategies for small teams (edge-first strategies).

Actionable takeaways

Start with an OAuth2-based tender + webhook flow and make correlation_id mandatory.
Implement signature verification and idempotency before going to production.
Instrument traces and metrics with correlation_id and carrier_booking_id to troubleshoot quickly.
Automate exception fallback paths in the TMS so driverless capacity improves, not disrupts, your operations.

Call to action

Ready to integrate autonomous trucking into your operational flows? Start with the 30-minute quickstart above, register for a carrier sandbox, and run the tender + webhook tests. If you want a prebuilt connector, observability pipeline, or an enterprise-grade relay for hybrid TMS deployments, contact our team to accelerate the integration with hardened security, retries, and monitoring — we help teams go from POC to production safely and quickly.

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