Client:
A $50 million manufacturer of industrial products, undergoing rapid expansion.
Challenge:
Over a three-year period, their less-than-truckload (LTL) freight spend had nearly quadrupled—placing significant pressure on margins and internal operations.
The company’s freight booking process was not keeping pace with growth. Freight decisions were reactive, inefficient, and overly dependent on manual intervention. Staff were overwhelmed, shipments were missed, and leadership couldn’t explain the escalating transportation costs.
They suspected their LTL program was bloated and inefficient but lacked the internal bandwidth and market knowledge to benchmark performance or run a formal bid process. Their COO engaged Waypost Advisors to diagnose the problem, benchmark their current program against market norms, and guide them through a bid process designed to reduce cost, improve service, and future-proof operations.
Strategic Objectives:
The client’s goals were clear and results-oriented:
- Benchmark their LTL spend, processes, and partner mix against industry best practices.
- Reduce overall freight costs without compromising service reliability.
- Streamline internal operations by reducing carrier complexity and modernizing the booking process.
- Build strategic relationships with carriers that could scale with their continued growth.
The Waypost team was asked to deliver clarity, and structure a bid process that would set the company up for long-term success—not just a one-time cost reduction.
Approach:
Waypost began with a deep-dive diagnostic, interviewing both leadership and operations staff to understand pain points, decision-making habits, and the broader context of the company’s growth trajectory. Freight data was analyzed across key dimensions: spend, shipping volumes, geographic lanes, and carrier performance over time.
This discovery phase revealed operational bottlenecks, inconsistent carrier selection practices, and overuse of premium services vs customer requirements. Waypost paired these findings with broader insight into market benchmarks to assess where the company had pricing power—and where it didn’t.
From there, Waypost designed and executed a formal LTL bid process:
- Built a carrier portfolio tailored to the company’s freight profile—balancing national and regional providers to ensure geographic strength and competitive pricing.
- Designed and distributed a bid package detailing lane-level data, desired contract terms, service requirements, and fuel surcharge methodology.
- Facilitated pre-bid meetings with invited carriers to align expectations and begin relationship building.
- Managed bid administration, clarified responses, and normalized results for clean apples-to-apples comparisons.
- Used the company’s prior 12-month baseline data to model and project cost savings by carrier and lane.
Waypost ensured that both cost and service were considered in the bid analysis, helping the client avoid selecting partners who couldn’t meet reliability or visibility standards.
Assessment Areas:
- Carrier mix and pricing trends
- Internal freight booking workflows
- Freight lane optimization
- Spot market vs. contract rate comparisons
- Technology gaps in quoting and booking
- Growth alignment and carrier scalability
Tools and Methodologies:
- Freight data analytics and baseline modeling
- Carrier benchmarking and bid design
- RFP administration and bid normalization
- Strategic partner vetting
- Implementation support and booking platform training
Deliverables:
- Recommended carrier consolidation strategy
- Bid results dashboard and cost reduction model
- Fuel surcharge transparency structure
- Online booking platform set-up and training
- Freight lane and mode shift strategy (e.g., FTL to DC)
Conclusion:
The result was a significant operational and financial win. Waypost recommended two new carrier partners, selected for their service quality, regional strength, and pricing competitiveness. The company reduced its carrier portfolio from six to two, simplifying operations and increasing leverage. After six months of reliable shipment history, they were able to negotiate an additional 5% reduction in freight rates.
Waypost also identified select lanes suitable for mode shifting from LTL to full truckload with local distribution—capturing another 15% in potential savings. The result was a 13% reduction in cost per ton shipped.
Waypost didn’t just hand off the analysis—they helped implement the new contracts, trained internal staff on the new booking platform, and remained engaged through the transition to ensure smooth execution and relationship success.
“Thanks again for the valuable insights and negotiating tools. Money VERY well spent on our end.” — COO, Industrial Product Manufacturing Company