Yes. You read that correctly. A freight management company is about to tell you to stop managing freight, and we’re aware of the irony.
But plenty of supply chain leaders spend their time tendering loads, chasing trailers that missed their appointments, and arguing over detention with a carrier rep they’re now on a first-name basis with, whether they wanted to be or not.
Somebody has to do that work, and it shouldn’t be you.
The hours you spend keeping loads alive come straight out of the network plan, which is the thing your CFO asks about when freight runs over budget. It’s hard to win a strategic seat at the table when you keep stepping out to take a carrier’s call.
This article makes the case for handing off the execution and keeping the decisions, starting with what all that firefighting is costing you.
What Does Freight Firefighting Cost You?
It costs you time, money, and good standing with the executives who set your budget. Your invoices only showcase the financial piece.
The hours are the easiest to count: if rejected tenders, detention disputes, and “where’s my truck” calls eat around 12 hours a week, that’s about 600 hours a year, or 15 workweeks spent as the most senior person on hold.
Then there’s the money, which leaks out through rush fixes. A load covered at the last minute moves at whatever the spot market says it’s worth, and a missed delivery can turn into an expedite nobody budgeted for. Both get pricier as capacity tightens, and the September Logistics Managers’ Index showed transportation capacity shrinking for 10 straight months.
The standing hurts most, because executives judge you on the network plan and the freight budget, and firefighting leaves little room for either. Gartner’s Lindsay Azim described the squeeze at the firm’s Orlando symposium: “We’re juggling two timelines at once, delivering today while knowing we need to prepare for what’s next.”
Why Is Freight Management a C-Suite Issue Now?
Because freight got expensive enough this year that executives started reading the freight line, and logistics was already at the top of their cut list.
Diesel hit $6.53 a gallon on September 21, a record for the 32 years the EIA has tracked it and 89% above January’s low, according to EIA data compiled by USAFacts. EIA’s October 5 average of $6.20 hasn’t calmed anyone down.
The pressure to cut was there before the fuel spike too. Gartner’s 2026 supply chain outlook, published last November, names logistics as the top target for cost reduction, and CSCMP’s 2026 State of Logistics Report describes a market in which disruption and volatility have become permanent features.
So expect the CFO to keep asking about freight, and don’t answer with a rate sheet. Detention, empty miles, reweighs, and claims can make cost per load look fine while total cost bleeds, and the leader who can explain that walks in with a strategy instead of a cost variance.
How Do You Free Leadership Time From Freight Operations?
Hand the execution to a managed freight provider and keep the decisions that shape your network, so carrier calls go to people who are paid to take them. The split usually looks like this:
- You keep: network design, mode mix, service levels, and the freight budget.
- The provider runs: tendering, tracking, exceptions, and carrier sourcing, and brings you backhaul and consolidation ideas to approve.
If you can’t tell where something belongs, ask whether it changes what your network will cost next year. If it does, it’s yours, and if it only decides which truck backs into door 14, let it go.
You keep control by judging the provider on network results instead of load counts, the way our total-cost view does with accessorials, deadhead, claims and expedites, and on-time in-full.
Hiring another freight person tends to move the problem down the hall, because the hard calls still find their way back to you. A team built for systematic execution takes them off your plate.
What Should You Do With the Time You Get Back?
Spend it on the two things that earn you a seat at the executive table: network decisions that keep getting reopened and freight costs nobody’s found yet.
Network decisions tend to loop: in a Gartner survey of 151 supply chain leaders, 72% had to revisit a final network investment decision, and more than 50% went back three or more times. Gartner’s advice is to price chronic turbulence, premium freight included, into the business case, which is hard to do between late-truck calls.
Hidden freight costs are the other prize, and equipment purchases are a good place to dig, since makers often bake shipping into the price. When freight threatened to blow the budget on Georgia-Pacific’s™ facility modernization in Halsey, Oregon, our team reviewed lanes and trailer types, questioned standard rates, and swapped flatbeds for Conestogas. We wound up cutting conveyor shipping costs by 57%.
Walk into a budget meeting with a number like that and the questions get a lot more interesting. Our outsourced freight ROI guide shows how to find yours.
Where Does KBX Logistics™ Fit In?
We take the execution pile, and you keep the decisions.
Our team runs your loads on KBX TM™ and KBX Track™ and brings you the backhaul and rail-versus-truck calls worth approving. It’s the model we built inside Koch before we sold it to anyone, and we run it on 8,000 domestic loads a day.
Everyone who moves your freight makes a margin, us included. Ours comes from taking waste out of your network, starting with empty miles, which keeps us pointed in the same direction you are.
We take on the emergencies too.
In October 2024, as Hurricane Milton intensified, our team moved DEPCOM™ Power’s 15,180-pound uninterruptible power supply enclosure by roll-on/roll-off vessel from Jacksonville, Florida, to Salinas, Puerto Rico, and it arrived on time. Koch’s own companies made the same hand-off, and we’ve been running their freight ever since.
Contact us to learn more about KBX freight management. Bring the five lanes that give you the most grief, and we’ll show you where we’d start.