Even with a rumored increase in freight, the industry has a long way to go before demand catches up with capacity, and maybe even longer before rates start reaching a reasonable level again. Under these circumstances – when you need all the freight you can get – does it really matter how profitable the freight is?... Read More

Pricing and costing are two very different issues. Recently, I met with the President of a client; he was questioning the reported profitability of a specific customer. They were invoicing at a reasonably high rate based on the lane served and the service they anticipated providing. However, as we examined the data, it turns out they were doing a number of things outside of the original service design including more trailers than expected in the pool, relaying the loads between multiple drivers, and dropping the loads for several days at a time, just to name a few (please see 'The ABCs of Profitable Fleet Management' video). No one was pretending these inefficient activities didn't cost money, each time it happened there was some reason that was believed to justify it, but when they were able to see exactly how much each incident cost and exactly how it affected the profitability, it became much clearer why the profitability was so disappointing.... Read More