Rail components manufacturer: full visibility and a carrier RFP across $12M in freight spend

Situation

A North American rail-industry components manufacturer was spending about $12M a year on freight: $8M in full truckload, $3M in LTL, and $1M in parcel. All of it ran through a third party on a cost-plus arrangement with little transparency into what individual lanes actually cost. Cameo Consulting spent eight weeks with the procurement and supply chain leadership team to open the books, test the market, and put control of the spend back in house.

Approach

• Built lane-level benchmarking against market rates and interactive dashboards so the team could see cost by lane, mode, and carrier for the first time.
• Ran a full carrier RFP across the truckload network, from bid package through award analysis.
• Analyzed parcel zones and service levels to arm the team for carrier contract negotiations.
• Modeled LTL-to-truckload consolidation to find shipments worth combining.
• Assessed private fleet utilization to see where owned trucks beat purchased transportation.
• Closed with structured knowledge transfer so the internal team runs the function without outside help.

Results

• Full visibility across $12M in annual freight spend, replacing a cost-plus black box with lane-level benchmarks and dashboards the team runs in house.
• A completed carrier RFP with market-tested rates across the truckload network, plus zone analysis ready for parcel negotiations.
• A structured handoff left the internal team with the entire function: the tools, the data, and the playbook.