One Question Every LTL Shipper Should Be Asking Their Carriers

Yesterday, TranzAct had the privilege of hosting a webcast with CSCMP, the National Industrial Transportation League (NITL), and executives from three of the nation's Top-10 LTL carriers: Estes Express, Pitt Ohio, and AAA Cooper.

It's rare to hear multiple carrier executives openly discuss where the LTL market is headed, how they evaluate customer relationships, and what shippers need to understand as they prepare for 2027.

As I listened to the discussion, one thought kept coming back to me. The rules of LTL have changed.

For years, shippers evaluated carriers. Today, carriers are evaluating shippers. That simple shift may be the single biggest change taking place in today's LTL marketplace.

Which leads to the one question every LTL shipper should be asking their carriers:

"What do you think of us as a customer?"

Most companies routinely evaluate their carriers on pricing, service and performance. Yet relatively few ask their carriers to evaluate them. How can companies build truly collaborative relationships if only one side of the relationship receives a report card? That question became one of the central themes of the discussion.

The carrier executives reinforced something TranzAct has been discussing for quite some time. The most successful LTL carriers are no longer simply moving freight—they're optimizing their networks. They're using better data, more sophisticated analytics, and a sharper understanding of profitability to determine which freight best fits their operations.

Increasingly, carriers aren't asking, "Can we move this freight?" They're asking, "Is this the kind of freight we want to move?" That changes the nature of every sourcing event.

Tomorrow's sourcing strategies cannot simply focus on negotiating lower rates. They must also focus on becoming a better customer.

Throughout the discussion, the carrier executives emphasized operational consistency, predictable freight flows, communication, timely payment and solving problems together—not simply negotiating another discount.

That isn't soft philosophy. It's smart business.

Another important theme was what Rob Estes referred to as the "Green Revolution." This revolution isn't about environmental sustainability. It's about protecting profitability, improving network yield and managing the "green stuff"— cash flow.

One example was payment terms. These executives explained that extending payment terms from 30 to 60 or even 90 days doesn't eliminate costs. It simply causes financing costs to work their way back into transportation pricing. Once you understand how carriers view profitability and cash flow, many of today's pricing decisions begin to make much more sense.

The good news is that higher carrier rates do not automatically translate into higher transportation costs. After conducting billions of dollars in LTL sourcing events over the past four decades, TranzAct has learned that many companies still have significant opportunities to reduce their total LTL spend by improving shipment profiles, aligning freight with the right carrier networks, strengthening operational execution and becoming a preferred customer.

Along the way, we've developed proprietary benchmarking and assessment methodologies that help companies better understand how carriers evaluate their business, identify hidden opportunities for improvement and frequently reduce transportation costs—even when carriers are increasing rates. While we don't publish the details of these methodologies, we're always happy to discuss them with qualified shippers who are serious about improving their transportation performance.

The companies that will achieve the best LTL results over the next several years won't necessarily be those that negotiate the hardest. They'll be the ones that best understand how their freight fits within their carriers' networks—and are willing to collaborate to create value for both organizations.

If you'd like to better understand how your carriers view your company, we'd be happy to share several of the benchmarking and assessment tools we referenced during the webcast and discuss how they can help identify opportunities to improve service, strengthen carrier relationships and reduce transportation costs. 

And if your company ships a meaningful amount of LTL freight, I'd encourage you to have that conversation before your next sourcing event. Sometimes a simple LTL Benchmark or Carrier Yield Assessment uncovers opportunities that create greater value than another round of rate negotiations.

That conversation may be one of the most valuable transportation investments your company makes this year.