Carriers and freight brokerages
What can AI do for a carrier?
A carrier's cost per mile is an average, and averages hide the trucks that lose money.
A carrier doing about $12M a year can usually produce one blended cost per mile, and that single number averages the trucks that earn together with the trucks that do not. QuickBooks will not calculate profit per truck or per lane on its own, so the work gets done in a spreadsheet once a quarter, by which time the rates have already been quoted.
On a 30-truck fleet, ten cents a mile of unexplained cost across 100,000 miles per truck is about $300,000 a year. It is not one big leak. It is dispatch time, deadhead, claims, and maintenance sitting in four places that never meet.
Gaps worth checking
- What does dispatching and billing a single load actually cost in office hours?
- Which trucks still earn, and which should have been replaced last year?
- What does a claim really cost once you count the parts nobody invoices you for?
- Where is the maintenance money going, truck by truck?
- How much driver onboarding paperwork is done twice?
- Which expenses are miscategorized often enough to move the numbers?
The right place to start is the one that is costing enough to matter.
The gap is usually between systems, not inside one.
Each system can be right on its own and still lose value in the handoff. These are the records that need to meet before you can see what the gap is costing.
- Your dispatch board or TMS
- Telematics and hours of service
- Fuel card statements
- QuickBooks
- Driver settlement spreadsheets
- Maintenance records, wherever they live
Named by what they do rather than by brand, because the brand matters less than whether the thing is connected to anything else.
What a carrier asks before they start
Can QuickBooks calculate cost per mile by truck?
- Not on its own. It can hold the costs, but it does not know your miles by unit, your settlements, or your fuel by truck unless someone assembles that by hand in a spreadsheet. That is the work that goes away when the systems are connected.
Do we have to leave our TMS?
- No. The TMS usually holds the operational truth and the accounting system holds the financial truth. The problem is that they do not talk, not that either one is wrong.
We are a brokerage, not an asset carrier. Does this still apply?
- Yes, though the question changes. For a brokerage the leak is usually margin per load and the office hours spent per load, rather than cost per mile.
How current would the numbers be?
- The goal is that they keep themselves current rather than being rebuilt monthly. How close to live depends on what your systems will hand over and how often.
Who owns the data?
- You do. The connected records and everything in them belong to your business, with no licence to buy and no long contract.
Everything we have written for carriers and freight brokerages
10 articles, newest first.
- Operations
Driver Detention Time by Customer: Where a Carrier's Trucks Wait
A carrier can see miles driven but not hours lost at a dock. Capture arrival and departure by customer to find recurring wait time.
- Finance
What a Claim Actually Costs a Trucking Carrier Beyond the Premium
Why a $13M carrier cannot say what a single claim costs beyond the deductible, and what counting downtime, admin time, and premium increases would show.
- Finance
When to Replace a Truck: How a Carrier Can Tell Which Units Still Earn
Why a $12M carrier cannot tell which trucks still earn their keep, and what it takes to decide replace-or-repair on evidence instead of instinct.
- Finance
Cost Per Load: The Dispatch and Billing Hours You Spend on Every Single Load
Why a $12M carrier cannot see the office wages buried in every load, and what counting the repeated dispatch and billing steps would show about cost per load.
- Operations
Map Processes Before You Automate: Trucking
Why a $13M trucking company cannot see where order-to-invoice loses time, and what mapping dispatch first would reveal before buying a TMS.
- Operations
Equipment Maintenance Logs for a Trucking Fleet
Why a $12M carrier cannot tell which trucks are overdue for service, and what automated maintenance logs would change about roadside breakdowns.
- Finance
Reporting Dashboards for a Trucking Company
Why a $14M carrier cannot tell which lanes and trucks actually make money, and what it takes to see real cost per mile and lane profit.
- Sales
CRM Alternatives You Control: Freight Brokerage
Why a $12M freight brokerage pays about $30k a year to rent access to its own customer data, and what a CRM alternative it controls would take to build.
- Finance
Expense Categorization Automation for a Trucking Company
Why a $12M trucking fleet cannot trust its own cost per mile, and what it takes to sort fuel, repairs, and tolls into numbers that hold up.
- Operations
AI Driver Onboarding for a Freight Brokerage
Why a $12M freight brokerage takes days to clear a new carrier, what that delay costs in lost loads, and what it takes to onboard in hours instead.
What AI can do in other trades
The gap changes by trade. The rule does not: find the recurring loss, put a number on it, then decide whether it is worth fixing.
Which small gaps have become worth checking?
Find more cashEnter your domain. See where cash may be slipping through and what to check first.
Have a question about a gap in your business? Contact us.