How waiting nine days cut a customer's freight by 62 %

The example

In April a manufacturer in Bryan asked for 40 reconditioned 275s. Forty units is two-thirds of a double-stacked trailer, so it does not fill a load, and it is well past the point where LTL makes sense. That leaves a dedicated run, and a dedicated Austin–Bryan round trip is about 200 miles of driving to deliver two hours of unloading.

They took the flexible option, the containers went out on day nine on the back of a delivery to College Station, and the saving was $735 — which is roughly the value of five of the containers on the order.

Why an empty leg is nearly free

This is not generosity and it is not a loss leader. When a truck delivers to College Station it comes home empty, and that return journey is already paid for by the outbound job. The marginal cost of putting 40 containers on it is fuel weight — about 5,000 lb, which is perhaps four gallons of diesel over 100 miles — plus loading labour and a little scheduling friction.

So the honest economics are: a dedicated run costs us a driver-day and 200 miles. A backhaul costs us an hour of loading and four gallons. We price accordingly, and there is no version of this where we would rather run empty.

When flexibility is not worth it

• When you genuinely need a date. A production line waiting on containers costs more per day than the entire freight saving. Say so and take the dedicated run.
• Inside Austin. The metro is close enough that dedicated and flexible are nearly the same price; there is no meaningful empty leg to exploit.
• Very small orders. Under about eight containers, LTL or collection usually beats both options.
• On corridors we run constantly. The San Antonio leg goes two or three times a week, so a 'flexible' order there might ship on day two anyway — the discount is smaller because the wait is shorter.
• Hurricane season on the Gulf Coast. Flexible scheduling and named-storm windows are a bad combination. Take the certainty.

How to ask for it

Put a window rather than a date in the message field: "any time in the next three weeks" or "before the 20th". That single sentence is worth more than any negotiation on unit price, and it is the piece of information we most often do not have.

The same applies in reverse when you are selling containers to us. A collection that can wait for a truck already going your way is priced better than one that needs a dedicated trip, and on a 20-unit load that difference is typically fifteen to twenty percent on the per-unit price.