Freight Management Solutions: Six Functions Under One Provider

Freight management solutions almost always look better during the demo.

• The TMS promised smoother tendering.
• The visibility platform promised fewer “where’s my truck?” calls.
• The benchmarking tool promised a clearer view of what you should be paying.

And to be fair, each one does roughly what it promised.

The problem lies with what happens between these systems.

A rate gets rekeyed incorrectly. An exception alert sits in a shared inbox all morning. These problems often live in the handoffs, where ownership can get blurry and the work ultimately falls back on your team.

That’s the hidden tax of a piecemeal tech stack, and those hidden costs eventually come due.

That hidden tax matters even more as freight costs continue to rise. In September, the Cass Freight Index showed freight expenditures 20.4% higher year over year.

At KBX Logistics™, we know this challenge from the shipper’s side, because we built and ran freight management solutions for Koch companies long before offering them to outside shippers. That experience helps shape the checklist that follows: six jobs every load needs done, and one question for each that helps determine whether a provider can truly own the outcome.

We sell all six. And we think you should hold us to the same standard.

Planning & Optimization: The Job That Isn’t Demo-ed

Planning decides how a load moves before anyone quotes a rate: the mode, the equipment, what ships together, and when. It’s the least glamorous job on the list, and it’s where most of your freight spend is committed.

The challenge with standalone planning tools is that optimization is only as good as the operational context, data, and integrations behind it.

The 2027 Third-Party Logistics Study explains why that hurts: planning and routing deliver the biggest reported payoff from AI, and bad data and old integrations hold them back.

We plan the same freight our team books and runs, so our load planning comes from people who’ll hear about it when a call goes wrong. On one Koch Methanol project, that meant ruling out rail over damage risk and moving nine containers of gas-control gear 5,500 miles by road and ocean. All nine arrived intact and on time.

So before you sign with a provider, find out whether their planners ever touch a live load in their day-to-day work. 

Bids and Pricing: The Rate Has to Survive the Year

Once the plan says truck, somebody has to buy those trucks. That’s the pricing job, from the annual RFP to the accessorial terms nobody reads until the first detention bill. 

The award rate it produces is often the most optimistic number you’ll see all year, because it assumes every tender gets accepted.

In a split stack, the bid team hands off its awards. When carriers reject, whoever covers those loads never saw how the rates were set and buys their way out on the spot market. That’s how a lowest-bid award becomes a stack of spot invoices by fall. 

FTR told Logistics Management it expects contract rates, fuel aside, to hit records by year-end, so don’t expect those invoices to get smaller any time soon.

We price and plan the same freight, so whoever sets a rate lives with it. On Georgia-Pacific’s™ project in Halsey, Oregon, that cut conveyor shipment costs 57%, partly by swapping flatbeds for Conestogas. 

The question for any provider: Will the people building your bid be the ones covering the loads carriers turn down?

Benchmarking Tools: Catch the Rate Before It’s Stale

The early warning for those rejections is benchmarking.

The idea behind benchmarking is to hold each lane up against what the market pays now, so you know which lanes to rebid and which to leave alone.

Bought as a subscription, though, it tends to arrive as a quarterly deck, and a quarterly deck is a history lesson. By the time someone presents it, carriers on the lanes it flagged could already be turning loads down.

That lag also costs more than usual right now. The Logistics Managers’ Index had transportation prices at 92.7 in September, where anything over 50 means they’re rising.

The people answering the survey also expect more of the same over the next 12 months.

We write benchmarking into the same agreement as bids, sourcing, and carrier vetting, so somebody’s on the hook to act on it. Our read on the market comes from 8,000 domestic loads a day, and we grade lanes on total cost, counting rejections, spot covers, and accessorials along with linehaul. 

Carrier Management and Sourcing: Backup That Doesn’t Come Off a Load Board

A good benchmark keeps your rates honest, but price isn’t the only reason carriers walk.

They also remember who paid on time and whose docks kept their drivers waiting half a day. Sourcing is the work of being the shipper they want to haul for, with backup ready when the primary says no.

In a piecemeal tech stack, the backup is a broker working a load board the afternoon before pickup. In the conversations, rail rarely comes up, even though U.S. intermodal volume was up 10.4% from a year earlier in early October, per the AAR.

We’d rather be the 3PL that carriers call back, so we get a direct line to our team, flexible payment terms, and a fuel card that saved them an average of 53 cents a gallon in Q4 2024. 

We also run rail and intermodal across 168 railroads, so a long-haul backup can be a railcar instead of whatever’s left on the board.

So, ask who covers the load when the primary says no, and whether that truck was on anybody’s approved list.

Preapproved Carrier Network: Vetted Carriers Before You’re Desperate

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that federal law does not preempt state-law negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers. Those claims can now proceed in state court, putting even more scrutiny on how brokers select and monitor the carriers moving your freight.

Cargo theft adds another reason to look closely at those controls. While 69% of 3PLs report being extremely satisfied with their technology defenses, only 36% of shippers share that confidence.

We’d side with the shippers on this one. Don’t take “we vet our carriers” at face value. Ask for the requirements, how they’re verified and how often they’re rechecked.

Our carrier requirements are public: at least 20 asset trucks, an NMFTA-issued SCAC, and insurance certificates sent straight from the carrier’s insurance agent.

The question to ask: Can you show me exactly how a carrier gets into your network, and what could get them removed?

Load Tracking and Visibility: Seeing the Problem Is the Easy Part

A carrier can clear every one of those checks and still haul your load to the wrong address.

Verisk CargoNet warns that criminals can change a delivery address or contact after pickup, slipping past controls built around carrier selection.

Tracking is supposed to catch that, and it’s the most oversold function on this list.

KBX Track™ can put a dot on a map, and so can every other platform. The real value is what happens when that dot turns off the interstate unexpectedly. Who sees it, who decides what to do, and who acts before your customer has to call? KBX Track™ provides centralized visibility and real-time alerts, but the technology is only part of the equation.

In a piecemeal stack, it’s usually nobody until your customer calls.

Acting early is most of the job. During Hurricane Milton in October 2024, we had a 15,180-pound power supply enclosure for DEPCOM Power™ headed from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico. We booked RoRo space, kept a reroute plan ready, and got it there on time.

That’s the difference between tracking a shipment and managing one. Visibility tells you something changed. Freight management means someone owns what happens next.

The question to ask: When a shipment goes off plan, who sees it, who makes the decision and who owns the resolution?

How KBX Runs All Six Functions Under a Single Agreement

Buy freight management solutions one function at a time, and you may end up like the homeowner with six good contractors and no general contractor. Nobody owns the handoffs, and a seventh tool to watch the other six just adds another handoff.

We own the handoffs, and all six functions run under a single agreement. We said you should run this list on us, so these are our answers:

• Planning: Our planners book and run the freight they plan.
• Pricing: Whoever sets your rates also covers the loads carriers turn down.
• Benchmarking: Lanes get graded on total cost against 8,000+ domestic loads a day.
• Sourcing: Backup comes from parties with a direct line to us, or rail across 168 railroads.
• Carrier vetting: Our subcontractors meet our published requirements before they haul for you.
• Tracking: KBX Track™ alerts go to people who can act on them.

We built our model with a shipper-first mindset, starting as Georgia-Pacific’s transportation group, and now managing more than $2.5B in freight annually for Koch companies. 

Your TMS stays the system of record, with us connected around it, and nobody has to hand over all six on day one. Molex™ started with us on two lanes and is now past 2,000.

Put the same six questions to everyone else on your shortlist, and make each of them justify their cut. We’ll tell you straight which functions belong with us and which don’t. 

Contact us to learn more.