Answers for carriers and dispatch teams

Add up every cost of running the truck over a period — fixed costs like truck payment, insurance, and permits, plus variable costs like fuel, maintenance, tires, and tolls — then divide the total by the miles run in that period. Include your own pay. The result is what each mile has to earn before you make a profit.

Start from your cost per mile on total miles, add the deadhead needed to start the load, and require the rate to clear that with margin. Then adjust for the lane: how easy the backhaul is, how the facility handles trucks, the commodity, and current market direction. Bill every accessorial on top.

Book the return leg before the truck leaves, choose headhaul lanes that end where freight is available to come back, line up standing backhauls with regular partners, and rebook the next load while the current one is still in transit rather than after delivery.

Reduce it by booking realistic appointments, arriving on time, and pre-clearing paperwork so the facility can work the truck fast. Collect it by reading the detention terms on every rate confirmation and capturing timestamped arrival and departure — a gate system, a driver app, or a signed BOL with times — so the claim is provable.

Operating ratio is operating expenses divided by operating revenue, expressed as a percentage — lower is better. Below 95% means the trucking operation is profitable before interest and taxes; many well-run small carriers target the low 90s, and anything consistently above 100% means the operation is losing money on its core activity.

Truckload dedicates a whole trailer to one shipment that moves point to point. LTL (less-than-truckload) combines several shippers’ smaller shipments on one truck, moving them through terminals along the way. Truckload is faster with less handling; LTL is cheaper for freight that does not fill a trailer, at the cost of longer transit and more handling.

Most carriers run both. A TMS manages operations — loads, dispatch, documents, invoicing, settlements — and an accounting system (often QuickBooks or similar) manages the books, taxes, payroll, and financial statements. What matters is that they sync, so invoices and payments do not have to be entered twice.

A single-truck owner-operator can run on a load board, an ELD, and a spreadsheet. A TMS starts to pay off when the admin work — chasing paperwork, invoicing, tracking accessorials and settlements — takes more time than it saves, or when a missed detail (a lost lumper receipt, an unbilled accessorial) costs real money.

Start from the workflow you run today — load to invoice — and find the tool that removes the re-entry and paper-chasing steps without adding new ones. Check that documents attach to loads, accessorials are easy to bill, it integrates with your ELD and accounting, the price fits per-truck economics, and you can export your data if you leave.

A load board is a marketplace for finding freight — brokers post loads, carriers search and call. A TMS is the system that runs a load after you book it: dispatch, tracking, documents, invoicing, and settlement. A load board helps you find work; a TMS helps you execute and get paid for it.

An ELD (electronic logging device) records a driver’s hours of service and connects to the truck’s engine — it exists to meet a federal recordkeeping requirement. A TMS (transportation management system) is the software a carrier or broker uses to run the business: loads, dispatch, documents, billing, and settlements. They solve different problems and most carriers use both.

Look for one place to run a load end to end — accept it, assign a driver, track it, capture the POD, and invoice it — without re-entering data. Then check that documents attach to the load, accessorials are easy to bill, it integrates with your ELD and accounting, and you can export your data if you leave.

Yes, for one or two trucks with simple freight — a spreadsheet can track loads, rates, and settlements well enough. It breaks down as you add trucks, repeat customers, and accessorials: version conflicts, missed invoices, lost documents, and no reliable view of profitability by lane or customer.

A freight broker arranges transportation between a shipper and a carrier without taking possession of the goods — it connects and coordinates. A freight forwarder takes possession, often consolidates shipments, issues its own bill of lading, and takes on carrier-like responsibility for the freight, common in international and multi-modal moves.

Compare the cost per invoice. Quick pay is a discount the broker offers to pay you early; factoring is a fee a third party charges to buy your invoice. Use standard terms with brokers that pay on time, quick pay when a specific broker’s terms are long or cash is tight, and factoring when you need fast, predictable cash across your whole book.

Chargebacks come from cargo claims, late-delivery penalties, count and damage adjustments, fuel advances, and retailer fines passed through by the broker. Prevent them with proof captured at the time — a clean, legible POD with any exception noted, timestamped arrival and departure, load photos — and by reconciling every settlement against the amount you expected.