What Is a Healthy Margin per Load for a Freight Brokerage?

Why those figures cannot set a small brokerage’s target, and what can

The figures are real and on file with the SEC. They still cannot tell a brokerage billing a few million dollars a year what to aim for.

• Different measures. Adjusted gross profits, gross margin, cost of transportation and variable contribution each draw the line in a different place, and Landstar’s figure has already paid its agents.
• Different businesses. RXO’s segment includes last mile; Knight-Swift sells power-only service through its Logistics segment using its fleet of approximately 85,000 trailers; and 38 percent of Landstar’s 2025 revenue came from loads hauled by its BCO independent contractors rather than by brokerage carriers.
• Different freight. Landstar’s filing says revenue per load “can be influenced by many factors other than a change in price,” naming length of haul, freight type, special handling and equipment, fuel costs and delivery time. For example, 15 percent of a hypothetical $700 short haul is $105; of a hypothetical $3,000 flatbed load, $450. The cost of handling each load is not a percentage at all.
• Different scale. C.H. Robinson served 75,000 customers in 2025, and its largest accounted for about two percent of revenue. A small brokerage’s largest shipper can carry a far bigger share of its margin, so one account’s leaks move the whole number.
• Different exposure to the cycle. RXO’s filing says buy rates rose faster than its contractual sell rates as the market tightened in 2025. How hard a rate swing lands depends on the mix of contract and spot freight, which differs from one brokerage to the next.

What sets the target is the brokerage’s own arithmetic. Add up a normal month’s cost of running the brokerage, everything except carrier pay: salaries, commissions, payroll taxes and benefits, the TMS and load boards, insurance, rent, and a market salary for the owner’s own job. Leave out interest on money borrowed to carry receivables; it goes on each shipper’s line below. Divide by the loads delivered that month to get the break-even per load, then add the profit per load the owner wants. Illustrative example, invented numbers: a hypothetical brokerage spends $120,000 a month and delivers 600 loads, so each load has to keep $200 to break even, and $250 with a $50 profit target. If the leaks take $50 from the average load, booked margin has to be $300, or 15 percent on a $2,000 load. The 15 percent is an output of the arithmetic, not an input copied from someone else’s annual report.

Gross margin per load and net revenue per shipper, from the TMS

Gross margin per load is everything the shipper was billed for the load minus everything the carriers were paid or are owed for it. Net revenue per shipper is the same figure added up across that shipper’s loads; it also goes by spread or gross margin. To build it for one closed month, export from the TMS and the accounting file:

• One row per load: load number, shipper, origin and destination, equipment, delivery date and the rep who covered it.
• Every shipper charge on the load, including supplemental invoices sent later: line haul, fuel and each accessorial.
• Every carrier pay line, including a second carrier on a rebooked load and a TONU paid on a load that never moved.
• The amount invoiced, the amount the shipper paid and the date it paid.
• The date each carrier was paid, and whether it took quick pay and at what fee.

Then three columns: margin per load in dollars, margin as a share of billed revenue, and, by shipper, total margin, loads and average margin per load. Two cautions. A load whose carrier invoice has not arrived shows a margin that is too high until the detention or lumper line lands, so read a month that closed a few weeks ago, or flag loads with carrier pay still open. And a canceled load with a TONU paid and nothing billed is a negative margin, not a zero. Federal rules already require part of this record: under 49 CFR 371.3, a broker must keep a record of each transaction showing, among other things, the compensation it received for the brokerage service with the name of the payer, and any freight charges it collected with the date of payment to the carrier. That is a summary of the text, not legal advice; how it applies to a particular brokerage is a question for its transportation attorney.

From booked margin to collected margin: what the leaks take

The margin on the rate confirmation is a forecast. Each load carries three versions of it: booked when the load is covered, billed once the shipper invoice and carrier pay are final, and collected once the shipper’s payment has posted and every cost of getting it is counted. The steps between them are where the booked number and the bank balance stop agreeing.

• Accessorials paid, not billed. Each one comes straight off the load: a detention charge paid to the carrier and never billed to the shipper is margin paid out.
• Short pays. The carrier has already been paid in full, so a short pay nobody disputed is margin given back for good.
• Quick pay. The fee a carrier accepts to be paid early is income on the load; paying early is a cost, because the brokerage funds the carrier until the shipper pays. Both go on the load: the fee kept, minus what paying carriers early costs.
• Financing the gap. Carrier cost, times the days between paying the carrier and the shipper’s payment, times the annual cost of the credit line, the factor or the owner’s capital, divided by 365.
• Factoring fees, write-offs, claims deducted from a payment, and commission paid on margin that was booked and never collected.

Illustrative example, invented numbers: a hypothetical shipper gives a brokerage 40 loads in a month. Billing is $80,000 and carrier pay $68,000, so booked margin is $12,000: $300 a load, 15 percent. Then $1,000 of detention and lumper paid to carriers never reaches the shipper invoice, $800 goes to short pays nobody disputes, and carrying the carrier pay for an average of 40 days until the shipper pays costs about $750 at 10 percent a year; on the other side, the quick-pay fees kept from carriers who chose early payment bring in $400. Collected margin is $12,000 − $1,000 − $800 − $750 + $400 = $9,850: about $246 a load, or 12.3 percent of what was billed. Every one of those numbers is in the TMS and the accounting file; none of them shows on the rate confirmation.

Which shippers and lanes still pay after the leaks

Rank shippers on collected margin, not on revenue or booked margin. C.H. Robinson’s 10-K describes pricing its services “to provide a profit to us for the totality of services performed for the customer.” The account, not the load, is the right unit for a small brokerage too. Once a quarter, one row per shipper:

• Loads, billed revenue and booked margin per load.
• Each leak in dollars: accessorials not billed, short pays, quick pay net of its cost, financing at the shipper’s actual days to pay, write-offs.
• Collected margin per load, and how far it sits above or below the brokerage’s break-even per load.
• The work the account took: rebooked loads, TONUs, rejected invoices and disputes opened.

Illustrative example, continuing the invented numbers: a second hypothetical shipper gives 20 loads at $2,500 each, with $41,000 of carrier pay, so booked margin is $9,000: $450 a load and 18 percent, the best on the list. But detention at its slow receiver goes unbilled on 16 of the 20 loads, $2,400; short pays take $1,600; and it pays about 60 days after the carriers are paid, which costs about $675 to carry. Collected margin is about $4,325, or $216 a load: just above the $200 break-even in the earlier example and well short of its $250 target. The first shipper, at 15 percent booked, keeps more per load: about $246, close to the target. Lanes get the same treatment, grouped by origin, destination and equipment, with contract lanes on their own line: C.H. Robinson’s filing warns that when contracted rates fall below market rates, it may be required to provide transportation services at a loss. What to do with a thin account is the owner’s call; a low-margin lane that keeps a good carrier busy can be worth keeping on purpose. The ranking only puts the collected number on the table.

Who reviews margin by shipper, and how often

Margin review fails the way the leaks do: the numbers belong to three people and the review belongs to none of them. A cadence that fits a brokerage of a few desks:

• Every week, the operations lead with each rep, in 15 minutes: last week’s delivered loads that fell under the break-even per load or below zero, each with a reason: a market move, a mispriced quote, an absorbed accessorial, a rebook.
• Every month, the owner with the sales lead and whoever runs AR: collected margin by shipper and lane for a month that closed long enough ago for its shipper payments to arrive, beside last month’s booked margin. One page, the same columns every time.
• Every quarter, and before any renewal or bid: each shipper’s collected margin, leaks and actual days to pay go into the rate and terms conversation. C.H. Robinson’s 10-K notes that its contractual rate commitments are mostly for one year or less and allow for renegotiation; the renewal is when the number can change the price.

One named person, a controller, bookkeeper or AR lead, builds the report from the same export every time, so a change in the number is a change in the business, not in the method. Reps see their own shippers’ collected margin. Whether commission is paid on booked or collected margin is the owner’s decision; paying on booked margin means paying commission on the leaks too.

When this count is not worth it, and where the Review fits

When the owner still books, covers and bills every load, a monthly spreadsheet of margin per shipper is enough. A brokerage whose TMS already reports collected margin by shipper and lane, read monthly by the owner, has done the work. The count earns its afternoon when booked margin looks fine and the bank balance disagrees, when one shipper carries a large share of the margin, or when a renewal is coming and nobody can say what the account kept last year.

The Revenue Review is a read-only engagement of two weeks, built from the brokerage’s own TMS, remittances, carrier payments and accounting file. It computes booked and collected margin by shipper and lane, puts a monthly dollar figure on each leak where the records support one, and ends in a written report and a 90-day plan the brokerage keeps. It sets no rates, recommends no lender or factor and gives no legal advice. The next step is a free 20-minute call, which is enough to tell whether the count above, done in-house, already covers it.