Playbook
The month-end freight review: from “nobody can say why” to five decisions.
Freight is over budget, and everyone in the room has a theory: volume, diesel, spot trucks, a carrier. Nobody has a number.
The problem
The month-end review starts with a single number, the gap, and ends without an owner for it. The same causes come back next month.
The playbook
- Load the trip log. Every dispatch with its load, freight bill, detention and on-time status.
- Price actuals the same way as the plan. Same landed-cost formula, same rate cards.
- Split the gap into volume and rate. They must add up exactly to the total.
- Split the rate gap into five causes: empty truck space, rate card, unplanned trips, detention, service.
- Give each cause one owner and one action for the coming week.
- Rank findings by rupees, and link each to the trips behind it.
- Re-plan next month on this month’s data, not last month’s plan.
Who usually owns what
| Cause | Typical owner | Typical action |
|---|---|---|
| Empty truck space | Dispatch planning | Consolidate loads; review truck type per lane |
| Rate card | Freight procurement | Recover overcharges; renegotiate the lane |
| Unplanned trips | Plant and sales planning | Find why demand was not in the plan |
| Detention | Plant gate or depot | Fix slot booking and unloading delays |
| Service | Carrier management | Review the carrier on the lane |
Related: freight variance analysis, reducing empty running and freight cost reduction levers.
How FreightPlan does it
FreightPlan loads your masters (plants, depots, lanes, carriers, fleet, rate cards and demand) from CSV, validating every row: a bad row is rejected with the reason and the fix, and the rest of the file loads. It prices every option with one landed-cost formula (billable load × rate × (1 + fuel surcharge) + toll + handling) and uses a Google OR-Tools optimiser to choose the plant, carrier and truck type for every depot, in whole trucks, within 1% of optimal, subject to six written rules: demand, plant output, fleet truck-days, carrier share, contracted commitments and whole trucks. Unserved demand is reported, never hidden. At month-end the same formula prices the trip log, the gap is split into volume and rate so the two add up exactly to the total, and the rate gap is split into five causes (empty truck space, rate card, unplanned trips, detention and service), each with an owner and an action.
Questions
How do I run a monthly freight cost review?
Price the trip log with the same formula as the plan, split the gap into volume and rate, split the rate gap into causes, give each an owner and an action, and rank findings by rupees.
What are common causes of freight overrun?
Empty truck space, trips paid above the rate card or on another carrier, unplanned trips, detention, and service failures, alongside higher volume.
Who should own freight overruns?
Each cause needs its own owner, for example dispatch planning for empty space and procurement for rate-card breaches.
See it on your own data. FreightPlan — Budget freight, explain the gap. Book a 30-minute working session with an engineer.