Margin per load

Customer rate less carrier cost per load, including accessorials on both sides, rolled up by shipper, by lane and by the pair. The pairs at or below zero hide inside profitable shippers and profitable lanes. The contract-versus-spot split on each side says whether the price is stale or the carrier was bought badly.

DefinitionCustomer rate less carrier cost per load, including accessorials on both sides, rolled up by shipper, by lane and by the pair. The pairs at or below zero hide inside profitable shippers and profitable lanes. The contract-versus-spot split on each side says whether the price is stale or the carrier was bought badly.

Both roll-ups

Shipper-level hides the losing lane. Lane-level hides the losing shipper. The pair is the unit.

Recovery at the lane norm

Median margin on the lane across shippers, times the pair's loads, less what it earns now.

How it is computed

Customer revenue minus carrier cost, including accessorials and claims on both sides, divided by loads, by shipper and lane.

Example

The largest shipper moved 1,200 loads at $148 each after absorbed detention and claims. A mid-sized shipper moved 300 at $310.

Where it goes wrong

Margin percent used. A small load at 18 percent earns less than half of a large one at 11.

Articles that use this term

Board and management reporting · Freight brokers and 3PLs

Margin per load by shipper and lane: the freight that moves and earns nothing

How a freight broker measures gross margin per load from the load ledger's customer rate and carrier cost, rolls it up by shipper and by lane, finds the shipper-lane pairs at or below zero margin that volume was hiding, separates contracted lanes priced wrong from spot lanes bought badly, and ranks the pairs by the margin that a repricing or a carrier change would recover.

16 Sept 20262 min read Board and management reporting · Freight brokers and 3PLs

Ten questions a freight brokerage president asks, and the table that answers each

The ten questions the president of a freight brokerage puts to the shipper sales and carrier teams, which shipper-lane pairs lose money, where is one carrier the lane, which lanes are rejecting before the market does, where are we primary and where are we the backup, which shippers give us a fraction of their lanes, what does a rejection cost us, which shipper reps' books depend on one shipper, which carrier reps keep their carriers, what is the spot share of the book, and what changed, each with the table from the load ledger and the tender log, and the answer to send back.

16 Sept 20263 min read Forecast and pipeline · Freight brokers and 3PLs

Tender rejection rate by lane: the capacity signal in your own tender log

How a freight broker reads its tender log as a capacity signal: rejections over tenders per lane per week, the lanes where the rate rose against their own baseline before spot rates did, the carriers rejecting most on each lane, the cost of a rejection in the spread between the contracted rate and the cover rate, and the shipper conversation that a rising rejection rate should trigger before the lane goes to spot.

16 Sept 20262 min read Data quality and reconciliation

The identity by industry: what has to sum to what on twelve desks

Every report on this site rests on an identity, a sum that must hold before any measure is read, and the sum is different on every desk: revenue to the ledger, TEU to booked TEU, seats to contracted seats, controls to the register, rental days to invoiced revenue. This hub gives, for twelve industries, the identity, the exports it joins, the failure it most often catches, and the guide where it is used.

16 Sept 20263 min read Alternatives and comparisons · Freight brokers and 3PLs

How to choose analytics software for freight brokers and 3PLs: questions, data and traps

How freight brokers should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.

24 Sept 20264 min read How-to guides

KPIs by industry: thirty-one desks, ten measures each, with the formula and the export behind it

A hub for the industry KPI pages on this site. For each of thirty-one industries and functions, from wholesale distribution and foodservice to commercial banking, law firms, freight, pharma, SaaS and sports, one page lists the ten measures that matter, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you, plus the three measures most teams in that industry miss, the figures to drop, the identity behind each table and who should own what. This page lists them all with the measure each industry most often overlooks.

17 Sept 20265 min read