Take a moment to think about the pitfalls of profitability over the past year. Going back to spring 2020, it’s easy to see where the problems began. According to TruckingInfo, “As stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic took hold across much of the country in the latter part of March, the level of freight available – and the rates to haul it – plummeted. This means many of the smallest companies that make up the vast majority of motor carriers are hurting.” However, even larger companies began to experience trouble. As demand for e-commerce accelerated, notes John Koetsier of Forbes, trucking carriers gained extreme favor in pricing power. Unfortunately, that favor, while general, doesn’t always apply to every one of the 135 trucking markets in the U.S. In turn, carrier freight pricing guidance must be attuned to the fluctuations within individual needs, and that’s despite the use of end-to-end trucking analytics. However, peer, market and historical freight invoice data can help, and it’s essential to know why.

Freight management parties still struggle with limited, outdated data

Problems evolving from market disruption share many commonalities. Freight management parties may not know where to turn for meaningful, actionable freight data. Unfortunately, outdated and limited data can be even more disastrous for supply chain decision-making than doing nothing at all. At the same time, data is not created equally. Raw data may sound universal. However, the root-based code’s differences within individual systems will affect trucking data’s applicability and usefulness. After all, data pulled from one system may look radically different from logistics data pulled from another.

Prescriptive truckload carrier freight pricing empowers carriers with a tactical advantage

A successful freight pricing strategy is not as simple as it sounds. While isolating a per-mile rate is great, it does little good to identify the low-hanging fruit that resounds throughout the industry. Think about it. Carriers’ best interests lie in making the most lucrative moves per truck and improving revenue per driver. As a result, the best moves for individual shipments may radically cross one another. In this space, multimodal freight optimization may be necessary, as well as freight consolidation and deconsolidation. In an ideal world, all freight would exist in full truckload. However, that is not reality. The only way to successfully navigate the freight market’s uncertainty and identify which moves, which loads, and their origin and destination pairings is to leverage an advanced analytics engine.

Prescriptive analytics applications within truckload carrier freight pricing mean deriving a tactical advantage within freight management to make the vital decisions. Freight carriers may allocate assets based on the temperature of a given market. And identifying who maintains the pricing power across individual lanes, a measure of lane acuity, will go a long way in allowing those carriers to offer drivers the best rates. Simultaneously, the best rates offered to drivers must amount to accepting an appropriate rate from enterprise shippers. After all, logistics management is about ensuring collaboration and profitability across the spectrum. It is a continuous flow of goods and transactions that enables supply chains to continue operations.