Answer extracted from The FreightFA Brief Podcast — listen to the full episode below.
What specific process should a logistics leader follow when brought in to protect freight margin over a 90-day period?
The process begins by pulling the trailing 12 months of shipment data to map the shipper's actual profile and cost exposures. Next, organize internal routing principles to understand how the full provider portfolio is executed, then run this data against a data warehouse containing roughly $9 billion annually in shipping transactional data to identify what rates are truly competitive. The result is not a fixed budget, but a moving-target budget that adjusts as market conditions shift—protecting margin in real time rather than against an outdated projection.
Building the Foundation: Data, Routing, and Competitive Intelligence
The first step is forensic: collect a full 12 months of trailing data from the shipper's own transactions. This isn't a rough estimate or a category average—it's the real shipment history, including origin, destination, weight, dimensions, service level, and actual costs paid. Without this foundation, any margin protection strategy is built on guesswork.
Once you have the data, the second layer is internal routing analysis. Understanding how the organization currently executes its logistics—which carriers handle which lanes, what service commitments exist, where redundancy sits—reveals the true operational picture. As Oliver Najumi explains in the episode, this is where you discover whether the portfolio of logistics providers is being deployed logically or reactively.
The third and most decisive step is benchmarking against reality. Running the shipper's actual data against a data warehouse containing roughly $9 billion per year of shipping cost transactional data reveals exactly what is competitive in the market today and what is not. This isn't theoretical pricing—it's what real shippers actually pay in real transactions across carriers, lanes, and service types.
"There is no Bloomberg for freight, so it teaches you to be forensic in how you audit shipping operations."
Oliver Najumi — Executive Vice President at ICC Logistics. Since joining ICC in April 2014, Najumi has worked closely with CFOs and supply chain leaders to deliver freight auditing and optimization results. He describes himself as a data guy who leverages ICC's nearly 50-year track record as an impartial extension of logistics teams, auditing freight with the rigor of a forensic investigation. Founded in 1975 by Tony Muzio, a former traffic manager frustrated with logistics inefficiency, ICC has built its reputation on treating every shipment, every contract, and every cost as a testable fact, not an assumption.
Why a Moving-Target Budget Protects Margin Better Than a Fixed One
Here's the critical insight: a fixed budget becomes obsolete within weeks. Market conditions—carrier capacity, fuel surcharges, peak season premiums, accessorial inflation—shift constantly. A static number locked in at the start of the 90-day window has no chance of staying accurate.
Instead, a moving-target budget adjusts as market data updates. It's recalibrated against the live $9 billion transactional database, so if carrier rates drop or surge, the expected cost is adjusted in real time. This keeps the margin protection strategy adaptive, not reactive. You're not scrambling three months in to find $500,000 of unexpected costs; you're already pricing them in.
This entire diagnostic and strategy-building process—pulling data, organizing routing, running competitive analysis, and building the moving budget—takes about two weeks. The result is a realistic, data-backed plan that actually holds up when executed, not an idealistic scenario disconnected from market pricing.
For a deeper look at how accessorial charges amplify exposure during this period, explore what accessorials really are and how they can turn a manageable shipment into a massive cost spike.
Key takeaways
- Pull 12 months of actual trailing data to map the shipper's real shipment profile and cost exposures—not averages or estimates.
- Organize internal routing principles to understand how the current provider portfolio is being executed and where inefficiencies exist.
- Benchmark against a data warehouse with ~$9 billion annually in real shipping transactional data to identify true market competitiveness.
- Build a moving-target budget that adjusts as market conditions change, not a fixed budget that becomes outdated within weeks.
- This entire process takes roughly two weeks and creates a realistic, defensible margin protection strategy.
See also
How should CFOs distinguish between legitimate cost increases and billing leakage in freight expenses?
Legitimate cost increases, such as correctly billed tariffs, are not leakage—they are just increased costs to do business. Actual leakage shows up when rates are not competitive or billing errors occur.
What are accessorial charges and how dramatically can they impact total shipping costs?
Accessorials are simply surcharges applied to freight, fuel, and other shipping components. In small package shipping, they can be much more impactful, with one customer facing $200,000 in annual accessorial costs when weight and dimension thresholds changed.
How can companies validate tariff classifications to avoid unnecessary cost penalties?
Companies must ensure their HTS codes are proper and that all descriptions and labeling are in good order, as tariffs can be more expensive when incorrect classifications are used.