Not All Freight Is Good Freight

Carriers rarely analyze shippers the way shippers analyze carriers.

Shippers score carriers on on-time performance, safety ratings, insurance coverage, and price competitiveness. They maintain scorecards, run quarterly reviews, and drop carriers who do not meet their standards. That is normal.

Now ask yourself: when was the last time you scored a shipper? When did you calculate the true profitability of each customer after accounting for detention, accessorials, payment terms, and operational friction? Most carriers never do. And that asymmetry is costing them.

Identifying High-Detention Customers

Detention is the silent tax that certain customers impose on your operation. A shipper who consistently holds your trucks for three hours at pickup does not just cost you detention pay (which you may or may not collect). They cost you:

• Driver hours that could be generating revenue miles.
• Equipment utilization — a truck sitting at a dock is a truck not earning.
• Schedule cascades — the next pickup is late because this one ran long.
• Driver frustration that compounds over time.

Without data, this is a vague frustration. With data, it is an actionable business decision. Track average dwell time by customer, by facility, and by day of week. The patterns will shock you.

Tracking On-Time Performance by Shipper

Carriers are measured relentlessly on their on-time performance. But shippers also affect on-time performance — through late loading, inaccurate appointment times, and paperwork delays. When a load delivers late because the shipper loaded it two hours behind schedule, whose performance suffers?

Tracking shipper-side on-time performance gives you:

• Negotiating leverage. Data showing consistent late loading supports requests for rate adjustments or schedule changes.
• Planning accuracy. If a shipper consistently loads 90 minutes late, you can plan for that rather than being surprised by it.
• Accountability. Presenting performance data to a shipper is a professional way to address operational issues that affect your business.

Profitability by Customer

Revenue per customer is not profitability per customer. The difference includes:

• Rate quality adjusted for lane distance and market conditions.
• Detention and dwell time at their facilities.
• Accessorial recovery. Do they pay accessorials reliably, or do they dispute every charge?
• Payment terms. A customer who pays in 15 days is worth more than one who pays in 60, even at the same rate.
• Operational friction. Complex requirements, restrictive appointment windows, and difficult facilities all have real costs.

When you calculate true profitability by customer, the ranking often looks very different from the revenue ranking. Your largest customer may not be your most profitable one.

Data-Driven Customer Pruning

This is the hard conversation most carriers avoid: some customers are not worth serving.

Not every load is good freight. Not every customer is a good customer. When the data shows that a customer consistently generates below-average profitability due to detention, late payments, low rates, or operational friction, you have three options:

1. Renegotiate. Present the data and request adjustments that bring the relationship to acceptable profitability.
2. Restructure. Change how you serve that customer — different equipment, different scheduling, different lanes — to improve the economics.
3. Release. Reallocate that capacity to more profitable freight. The trucks and drivers you free up will generate better returns elsewhere.

Pruning unprofitable customers feels counterintuitive. Revenue goes down in the short term. But profit goes up immediately, because the capacity you free up moves to better freight.

The power dynamic between carriers and shippers shifts when carriers have data. Data turns a request into a negotiation and a gut feeling into a business case.

Building Shipper Analytics

1. Track dwell time systematically. Every load, every facility. Automate the capture so it does not depend on drivers remembering to log it.
2. Calculate customer-level P&L. Revenue minus all costs attributable to that customer, including detention, deadhead on their lanes, and administrative overhead.
3. Review quarterly. Customer performance changes over time. A quarterly review keeps your freight mix optimized.
4. Act on the data. Information without action is decoration. Use customer profitability data to drive rate negotiations, capacity allocation, and relationship decisions.

The carriers who analyze their shippers as rigorously as shippers analyze them operate from a position of strength. They choose their freight. They do not chase it.