Industries · Freight brokerages
The shipper asked for a rate. It went out in twenty minutes. The follow-up never did.
An operations audit for a freight brokerage finds where money leaks after the shipper says yes: spot quotes that die silent, weekly shippers whose tenders taper to zero before anyone pulls the report, detention paid to carriers and never billed through, PODs that hold invoices — and cash — for days. We put a monthly dollar figure on each one in two weeks.
Or call +1 (202) 600-6027 — a person answers.
The pattern
You have probably seen all three of these this quarter.
01
The quote that died silent
A shipper you’ve chased for a year emails Tuesday asking for a rate on a Dallas–Atlanta dry van. Your rep prices it off DAT and has a clean number back in twenty minutes — then goes back to covering the board. Nobody calls Thursday to ask where it landed, so the load moves with whoever did.
02
The shipper who went quiet
She tendered four loads a week all spring. Then two, then one, then quiet — a missed pickup nobody wrote down, and her freight walked to the broker who called about it. The report that would have flagged the taper got pulled six weeks too late.
03
The detention you ate
The driver sat five hours at a receiver outside Memphis, and you paid the carrier detention because that’s how you keep good carriers answering your postings. The shipper’s invoice went out for line haul only — the accessorial lived and died in a rate-con note. Margin you earned, paid out, and never collected.
What we price
The leaks that get a monthly dollar figure.
- Spot quotes that went out fast and never got a second touch — and where those loads moved instead
- Shippers whose weekly tenders tapered to zero before anyone pulled the report
- Detention, layover and TONU paid to carriers and never billed through to the shipper
- The days between delivery and invoice while somebody chases the POD — and the cash sitting in them
- Shippers you onboarded, moved one load for, and never called again
The records we read
We take read-only access to your TMS — McLeod, Aljex, Tai, or whatever you dispatch from — plus your DAT or Truckstop account, the quote inbox, and the accounting file. Then we count what actually happened: quotes sent, tenders won, accessorials billed, PODs collected, invoices out.
Three questions
If any of these takes more than a minute, that is the finding.
01
How many spot quotes left your shop last month — and how many ever got a second touch?
02
How many shippers who tendered you freight in the spring haven’t tendered a load since?
03
What did you pay carriers in detention and TONU last quarter that never landed on a shipper’s invoice?
Not knowing them is not a failing — it is the exact gap The Revenue Review is built to close. More straight answers: fourteen of them, in writing.
If the numbers earn it
What gets built afterwards — in your terms.
- Revenue recovery →
- The quoted-and-lost list and the shippers who stopped tendering, worked back on a schedule instead of when a rep has a slow afternoon. This is the fastest money in a brokerage — the shipper already knows you, and a steady weekly shipper is six-figure freight over a year.
- Operations →
- POD to invoice the day the load delivers, and every accessorial — detention, layover, lumpers, TONU — captured on the load and billed through instead of dying in a rate-con note. Carrier setup that doesn’t stall a hot load while the packet sits in somebody’s inbox.
- Numbers and alerts →
- A flag the week a steady shipper breaks pattern, not the month after. Margin by lane and by rep, quote-to-award by shipper — pulled for you on a schedule, not when someone finally remembers to ask the TMS.
Only what the arithmetic justifies — we do not prescribe what we have not diagnosed. The order comes from the Review, not from a brochure.
Who this is not for
We would rather say it here than on the call.
Asset-based carriers. The Review reads a brokerage — quotes, tenders, margin per load. A fleet leaks differently, and we’d be guessing.
Anyone hunting a shipper lead list. We price what happens after the shipper says yes — filling the top of the funnel is a different job.
Owners hoping the answer is a new TMS. We read McLeod, Aljex, Tai, or the spreadsheet you swear you’re replacing — and ‘switch systems’ is almost never page one of the fix list.
Asked on almost every call
The two questions owners here ask first.
- We already run McLeod — doesn’t the TMS show all of this?
- It shows what got entered. The leaks live in what never made it in: the quote answered straight from the inbox and never logged, the detention paid off a note on the rate con, the shipper whose tenders tapered with no alert set to catch it. We read the TMS against the quote inbox and the accounting file, and we price the gaps between them. If your reports already answer our three questions, the free 20-minute call will make that obvious and cost you nothing.
- Our reps run cradle-to-grave and the board is slammed — when would we even do this?
- The Review runs on read-only access: no rep comes off the phones, and nothing about how you cover freight changes for the two weeks. A slammed board is usually exactly when follow-up dies and accessorials go unbilled — measuring a quiet month would only flatter you. The report ends in a sequenced fix list, so what changes afterward is decided by the dollar figures on each leak, not by gut. It starts with a free 20-minute call, and if the fit is wrong we say so on that call.
The next step
Tell us what isn’t getting followed up. We’ll tell you if we can help.
A 20-minute call about your numbers — no deck, and a straight answer either way, including “not yet” if that is the truth.
We call web forms back the same business day. Or skip the form — +1 (202) 600-6027.