Ohio Trucking Association · 2026 Annual Conference Breakout Session
Beyond the Average.
Practical strategies for building a more profitable truckload network. The average tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you whether the freight still deserves the truck.
KSM Transport Advisors
FreightMath · Network Profitability Advisory
Breakout Session · 60 min including Q&A
01 / 20
Frame the problem
The companywide average is useful. It is not the decision.
Operating ratio, rate per mile, and margin by month tell you what already happened across the whole network. They were never built to tell you whether a specific customer, lane, market, or operating day still deserves the capacity currently assigned to it.
What the average answers
Did the network perform?
A single trailing number, blended across every division, lane, customer, and driver domicile you run.
What the average can't answer
Which freight is earning its truck?
The average has already absorbed the winners and the losers. It can't point you back at either one.
Companywide OR 93.4
Lanes earning their truckLanes costing the network
Below the averageAbove the average
Same fleet, same month, one number. Lane-level OR, illustrative.
The question underneath everything today: "If we rebuilt the network today, would we choose this freight again?"
Section 1 · Set the Challenge
02 / 20
Before you diagnose the network
Break the business apart correctly first, or every answer downstream is blended.
01
Business Segmentation
Divide by service offering before comparing anything across it.
02
Overhead Accounting
A defensible allocation basis when multiple offerings share cost.
03
Driver Comp Fit
Pay structure specific to the freight type, not one blended scale.
04
Utilization Targets
Revenue and drive-time targets set per day and week, not per month.
05
Scenario Isolation
Ability to test one lane or customer's performance under a scenario.
Meridian Truck Lines' blended companywide OR of 93.4 quietly hides an 89.6 Dry Van and a 97.9 Dedicated split. Segmentation is the only thing that reveals that gap — and without it, every answer that follows stays blended.
Companywide, blended
93.4
One P&L, one number
→
Dry Van
89.6
Dedicated
97.9
Section 2 · Prerequisites
03 / 20
Where does your operation sit today
Standard, better, advanced — by category.
Level
Practice
Why it matters
Standard
One companywide P&L
No offering can be evaluated on its own economics
Better
Segmented by division only
Catches the big splits, misses freight type inside a division
Advanced
Segmented by service offering & freight type
Matches cost structure to the freight actually causing it
Level
Practice
Why it matters
Standard
Overhead spread evenly or by headcount only
Understates cost for capital- or terminal-heavy offerings
Better
One allocation basis per major cost pool
Directionally fair, still coarse across dissimilar offerings
Advanced
Activity-based costing to the load
Cost follows the activity that actually created it
Level
Practice
Why it matters
Standard
One blended pay scale, all freight types
Rewards the wrong behavior on dense or dedicated freight
Better
Pay differs by division
Better, but still blind inside a division's freight mix
Advanced
Pay structure tied to freight type and network role
Comp reinforces the density and utilization you're trying to build
Level
Practice
Why it matters
Standard
Monthly revenue-per-truck target only
Masks weekday-to-weekend and day-of-week collapse
Better
Weekly targets by division
Catches slow weeks, still misses which days drag them down
Advanced
Daily drive-time utilization targets
Surfaces the exact days and domiciles losing capacity
Level
Practice
Why it matters
Standard
Standalone lane rate review only
Ignores what the load causes the truck to do next
Better
Manual full-cycle spreadsheet, ad hoc
Gets the right answer occasionally, too slow to run routinely
Advanced
Repeatable scenario isolation on demand
Tests "what if we lost this backhaul" before it happens, not after
Section 2 · Prerequisites
04 / 20
Strategy set 2 · Meridian Truck Lines, three illustrations
The business case for freight can deteriorate even while the freight still feels familiar.
The lane, the customer, the relationship — none of it has to change on the surface for the economics underneath it to quietly stop working.
1 · Inflation outran the rate
$2.02 → $2.20/mi, OR 88 → 96
Rate up 9% over 3 years. Driver pay, insurance, and financing rose faster on the same lane. 8 OR points of margin lost to cost, not the rate.
2 · The driver pool changed
Deep local pool → thin, turning pool
Southeast domicile freight once covered same-day by local drivers now needs relay coverage — more deadhead, lower realized utilization, same lane.
3 · The backhaul fell apart
Columbus → Louisville, standalone now
The headhaul only worked because of a Louisville backhaul lost to a plant retool 8 months ago. Nobody repriced the headhaul when it disappeared.
Familiar is not the same as still working. Each of these needs to be retested on its own schedule, not just when volume drops enough to force the question.
Section 3 · Assumptions Expire
05 / 20
Strategy set 3
Analyze the sequence, not just the load.
Rate per mile, length of haul, and deadhead average describe the load. They skip the two questions that matter most: what came before it, and what came next.
Prior load
Chicago → Indianapolis
Live unload, on-time, positions truck well
Current load
Indianapolis → Nashville
$2.05/mi, 245 LOH, 6% deadhead
Next load
Nashville → Chicago
Reload waiting at delivery, drop-and-hook
The current load looks ordinary by itself. In sequence, it's the middle link of a clean triangle with almost no deadhead across all three legs.
Prior load
Memphis → Indianapolis
Late appointment, driver ran short of the ideal drop point
Current load
Indianapolis → Nashville
Same $2.05/mi, 245 LOH — but 41 mi deadhead just to reach it
Next load
Nashville → (unassigned)
No reload lined up; truck likely deadheads again
Identical rate, lane, and LOH. The sequence around it turns the same load into a capacity drain instead of a clean cycle.
Section 4 · Sequence Thinking
06 / 20
The deadhead most carriers miss
You already chase high deadhead. Medium deadhead is where the leakage hides.
Far fewer carriers routinely review repeatable 50–60 mile deadhead in their densest markets — common enough to feel normal, repeatable enough to add up every week.
50–60 mi
The band that never triggers an exception report, and repeats every week in your densest markets.
Market
Repeat DH band
Pattern observed
Likely cause
Action
Atlanta
50–58 mi
3×/week, same lane pair
No reload zone near delivery cluster
Build reload relationship, north Atlanta
Chicago
45–60 mi
Concentrated Mon/Tue
Dispatch defaults to nearest load, not best sequence
Add sequence check to dispatch workflow
Eastern PA
55–65 mi
Single customer, both directions
Facility sits outside dense lane corridor
Reprice for the deadhead or resequence around it
Carolinas
50–55 mi
Growing over 2 quarters
New account onboarded without a matched backhaul
Pair with backhaul before adding more volume
Section 4 · Sequence Thinking
07 / 20
Strategy set 4
Sunday and Monday may be a different business than the rest of your week.
Many carriers see 2–4 OR points of deterioration on Sunday and Monday — driven by fleet staggering, thinner driver availability at the start of the week, and deadhead built up over the weekend reset.
Monthly average OR 93.2
Sun
OR 96.8
Mon
OR 95.1
Tue
OR 91.9
Wed
OR 91.4
Thu
OR 91.6
Fri
OR 92.3
Sat
OR 93.0
0
OR points, Sunday and Monday versus midweek, on the same fleet and the same freight.
2 of 7
operating days carry the deterioration. The other five look fine, so the month looks fine.
A monthly average never shows this. A daily utilization target does — and it's the difference between a network problem and a scheduling problem.
Section 5 · Day-of-Week
08 / 20
Freight and capacity, crossing in the night
Group 3-digit ZIPs into market areas, then watch which way freight and capacity actually move.
Freight moves A to B all week; capacity repositions empty from B back to A on a different schedule — a matchable backhaul hiding between two market areas.
Driver domiciles and start patterns shape which days that capacity is actually available. Engineered dedicated freight, placed deliberately, can stabilize this imbalance instead of just serving one customer.
Same corridor, opposite directions, different days: the backhaul is already there.
Section 5 · Day-of-Week
09 / 20
Strategy set 5
≈
Two mediocre lanes, paired together, can look acceptable. Acceptable isn't the ceiling.
Each lane clears a decent rate alone. Combined into a round trip, the pairing produces a result nobody would flag as a problem — and isn't close to what the same truck could produce on the carrier's best cycles.
Lane A alone
$2.05/mi
Lane B alone
$1.98/mi
Paired round trip
−17% gap
$4,180/wk
Best cycle, same truck
$5,050/wk
Capacity tied up in acceptable-but-mediocre freight is capacity you can't deploy against the strong lane, the growing account, or the market you actually want to win share in. Status quo freight has an opportunity cost, and every other part of the network pays it.
Section 6 · Status Quo
10 / 20
Meridian Truck Lines, same truck class
Compare the "acceptable" pair to your best cycles — not to zero.
Metric
Mediocre pair
Best-cycle benchmark
Gap
Weekly revenue / truck
$4,180
$5,050
−17%
Deadhead
14%
4%
+10 pts
Dwell (avg hrs)
3.6
1.1
+2.5 hrs
Drive-time utilization
61%
84%
−23 pts
Weekend exposure
High
Low
—
Driver retention risk
Elevated
Low
—
Nothing here fails a standalone review. Everything here fails the comparison to what this truck is capable of.
−23 pts
of drive-time utilization left on the table by a pair nobody would ever flag.
Section 6 · Status Quo
11 / 20
Strategy set 6
Density is a strategy. It isn't a slogan.
A useful guardrail: market areas served should generally not exceed truck count ÷ 5. Beyond that, you're spreading capacity thinner than your ability to operate each lane multiple times, from each direction, on a near-daily basis.
Truck count
20150300450600
Fleet size
180
Recommended max market areas
36
This is a discipline check, not a hard ceiling — the point where you should be testing frequency and density before adding another market area.
How the guardrail scales
50 trucks10 market areas
100 trucks20 market areas
180 trucks (Meridian)36 market areas
250 trucks50 market areas
500 trucks100 market areas
Each box is one market area with five trucks behind it. Past the guardrail (orange), the same trucks get spread across more areas and lane frequency drops.
Section 7 · Density Discipline
12 / 20
What thin density actually costs you
Spread too thin, and the costs hide in behavior, not just the P&L line you're watching.
01
Recovery miles when a plan breaks and there's no nearby alternative
02
Out-of-route miles absorbed just to reach thin freight
03
More service exceptions with less local backup capacity
04
Repositioning moves that never show up as a named problem
05
Dispatcher heroics standing in for a repeatable pattern
06
Driver frustration from inconsistent, one-off routing
07
Lower pricing confidence because nobody can prove the lane is repeatable
08
More one-off decisions made under time pressure instead of by design
8 costs
none of which has its own GL line. They show up as behavior first and as margin later.
Section 7 · Density Discipline
13 / 20
Strategy set 7
Do you actually know your out-of-route percentage?
Two ratios worth tracking side by side: hub miles against billable miles, and hub miles against total TMS miles.
Hub miles / billable miles6.8%
Hub miles / total TMS miles9.4%
A layover isn't only the night a truck sits still with nowhere to go — compare remaining drive hours at the sleeper break against actual hours between loads to find which shippers, receivers, markets, or days reliably create OOR like this.
Section 8 · Out-of-Route
14 / 20
Before you blame the driver
Out-of-route is not always a driver problem.
01 · Network design
Routing assumptions built on outdated network geography
02 · Facility
Facility access restrictions the plan didn't account for
03 · Fuel network
Fuel stop placement forcing a detour off the planned path
04 · Facility
Parking constraints near the delivery window
05 · Dispatch
Dispatch sequencing that didn't consider the next load
06 · Planning
Appointment timing forcing early staging or late arrival routes
07 · Planning
Trailer repositioning needs the load plan didn't price in
08 · Planning
TMS mileage tables underestimating actual road behavior
Planning and dispatch decisionsFacility and road realities0 of 8 start with the driver
We all want 3%, 5%, and 10% rate increases. Meanwhile, many carriers are quietly utilizing available drive time at 50–70%. Closing that gap can rival, or beat, a rate increase you have far less control over.
0
Current drive-time utilization
0
Achievable utilization, same fleet
0
Equivalent rate increase this represents
← 19 pts you already own
Today 63%
Achievable 82%
0%25%50%75%100% of available drive time
Closing 19 points of utilization gap moved the P&L further than the last two rate increases combined — without a single renegotiated rate.
Section 8 · Out-of-Route
16 / 20
Strategy set 8 · Meridian Truck Lines, top-10 account review
Revenue rank isn't a customer strategy. Score network contribution instead.
Revenue, volume, tenure, and rate-versus-market tell you who's big and who pays well. They don't tell you whether that customer's freight actually improves the network it moves through.
Origin / destination market balance
82
Internal rate vs. similar customers
58
Day-of-week consistency
71
Reload quality
64
Driver fit
88
In-network profitability
55
Strategic fit
69
A top-10 revenue account with a middle-of-the-pack network score. Revenue rank would never show it.
Section 9 · Customer Strategy
17 / 20
Turn the scorecard into a decision
Protect. Grow. Fix. Reprice. Redesign. Exit.
Protect
High contribution, strong fit. Defend the relationship and the rate.
Grow
Strong fit, room left on volume. Invest sales attention here first.
Fix
Good economics, operational friction. Solve the service issue, not the rate.
Reprice
Good fit, rate hasn't kept pace. Bring the rate to the network's real cost.
Redesign
Fit exists but the pattern doesn't work. Change day, sequence, or terms.
Exit
Low contribution, poor fit, no credible path to either improving.
The best customer isn't the largest, oldest, or highest-rate account. It's the one that improves the economics and behavior of the network around it.
Section 9 · Customer Strategy
18 / 20
Take this back Monday
Five questions every carrier should be asking.
01
Does this freight still fit the network we operate today?
02
What does this freight cause the truck to do next?
03
Is the margin problem rate, execution, utilization, or network design?
04
Are we protecting this freight because it's strategic, or because it's familiar?
05
If we rebuilt the network today, would we choose this freight again?
Section 10 · Close & Q&A
19 / 20
Open floor
Questions.
What long-standing assumption in your network deserves to be retested first?
