Truckload Freight Cost Reduction
Cut Freight Costs
Transportation is the largest supply chain expense, and inefficient freight utilization wastes resources and cuts into profits. While companies have little control over fuel prices, driver wages, carrier operations, and market-driven transportation costs, there are key areas you can control to reduce your total freight bill: ✔ Maximize Payload – Ensure every truck is fully utilized ✔ Use Preferred or Core Carriers – Optimize carrier selection for cost and reliability
challenges
The Challenges of Freight Inefficiencies
Underutilized Trucks
When trucks aren’t filled to capacity, it results in unnecessary shipments, higher transportation costs, and wasted resources. At the peak of carrier shortages, Unilever identified this as a major opportunity to optimize efficiency.
Fill ’Er Up!
A staggering 92% of trucks on the road are not fully loaded—neither by weight nor volume. Even among top-tier companies, load-building analysis consistently reveals a 5–10% improvement opportunity. Yet, customers rarely have incentives to “order to the max,” leaving additional savings untapped.
Not Using Core Carriers
As the saying goes, “We deploy, at premium cost, product that may not be needed, from sites that may struggle to ship it, to sites that may not be able to receive it.” This self-inflicted inefficiency arises because even the best supply planning systems fail to account for network capacity.
Preferred (core) truckload carriers operate with limited availability, and when supply plans create extreme fluctuations, intermodal carriers can’t adapt to sudden peaks. The result? More expensive, carbon-intensive truckload carriers stepping in, driving up transportation costs unnecessarily.
Our Solution
How We Solve It
Reducing Transportation Costs with LevelLoad
ProvisionAi’s LevelLoad eliminates freight inefficiencies by automating and optimizing replenishment transportation scheduling. Analyzing 30 days of supply needs, warehouse capacities, and carrier availability, it creates balanced, efficient transportation plans that meet OTIF goals while reducing manual effort, errors, and disruptions.
By smoothing daily shipment volumes across lanes, LevelLoad empowers core carriers to handle a higher percentage of loads, leading to significant cost savings.
The results?
✔ Lower transportation costs
✔ Improved on-time deliveries
✔ Higher order fill rates
Lower Carrier Costs
Core carriers can handle a much higher percentage of the volume substantially improving cost and quality. There is also an opportunity for carriers to reduce their prices because they build waiting time and deadhead miles into pricing. A smoother, predictable flow reduces these costs, providing a prime opportunity for negotiators to secure better rates.
Earlier Load Tendering
With LevelLoad’s transportation forecast, loads can be tendered earlier, increasing the chances of securing preferred (core) carriers at lower rates.
Optimized Load Assignment
By decoupling shipment content from the tendering process, companies can get priority access to top-tier carriers.
Reduced Detention Time
LevelLoad factors in the capabilities of each shipping and receiving location, ensuring deployments align with site constraints, leading to fewer delays and lower detention costs.
Improved Customer Service
No longer are vans forced to wait to unload! LevelLoad helps ensure the prioritized stock is available for customer shipments, on-time and in-full (OTIF).
Reducing Transportation Costs with AutoO2
For shipments where you pay the freight and control the order, AutoO2 leverages AI to maximize payload, reducing transportation costs and inefficiencies.
For customer orders, AutoO2 enables:
✔ Order consolidation to meet required time windows
✔ A repeatable picking and loading process in the warehouse
This structured approach allows companies to adjust terms of sale, encouraging customers to increase load factors without the risk of overloading. A repeatable process is critical—forcing customers to order more, only to leave products behind due to spae constraints, is not a viable solution. Read the case study.
“We might be configuring 8 different items on a truck from the manufacturing point, and with ProvisionAI, we can increase load fill by up to 3%.” Over time, a 3% improvement is significant.”
Scott De Groot
VP of Global Logistics at Kimberly-Clark
Ready to Optimize Your Freight?
Take control of your logistics costs and improve efficiency with ProvisionAi’s intelligent solutions. Contact us today to see how we can streamline your operations, enhance delivery performance, and maximize your ROI.
