Supply Chain Operations · Freight cost, benchmarked
Transportation & Logistics
Cameo Consulting helps mid-market companies cut freight costs and keep them down. Freight is usually the largest addressable spend in the business that nobody has benchmarked. It hides across hundreds of carrier invoices, a 3PL markup, and a parcel contract that renews on autopilot, so no one sees the full number. The work starts by putting a market price on every lane you ship.
When companies call about this
When do companies bring in Cameo Consulting?
Four triggers show up again and again.
Freight spend grew faster than revenue
Revenue is up 8 percent, freight is up 20 percent, and nobody can explain the gap. The rate file has not been compared to the market since it was signed.
A cost-plus 3PL runs the freight, and nobody can see the math
The invoices show a total, not the carrier cost underneath it. Ownership wants to know whether the markup is 8 percent or 28 percent, and the contract makes that hard to answer.
Carrier contracts have not been bid in 3 or more years
Truckload rates move in cycles. Contracts signed at the top of the market and never re-bid can sit 10 to 20 percent above current rates without anyone noticing.
A parcel renewal is approaching
Parcel carriers count on shippers signing the renewal as presented. Zone and service-level analysis before the negotiation is often worth 6 figures on a $1M parcel spend.
What does the work include?
The work
- Freight benchmarking. Every lane you ship, priced against current market rates by mode and equipment type. This is the baseline for everything else, and it usually takes 2 to 3 weeks from clean data.
- Carrier RFPs and negotiation support. Bid package construction, carrier outreach, bid analysis, and negotiation support through signed rates. Incumbents are always invited to compete.
- Parcel and LTL/FTL strategy. Parcel zone and discount analysis ahead of contract negotiations. LTL versus truckload breakpoints, so shipments stop moving on the wrong mode by habit.
- Mode consolidation. Combining LTL shipments into full truckloads, pairing lanes to cut empty miles, and shifting volume to intermodal where transit time allows.
- Dedicated fleet advisory. Whether a private or dedicated fleet pencils out on your densest lanes, and how to run the one you already own harder. On one engagement, a fleet utilization review sat alongside the carrier RFP in the same 8-week window.
What do you get?
- A lane-level cost baseline benchmarked against the market.
- A savings list ranked by dollar size and effort to capture, with owners and dates.
- A completed bid package and negotiated rates where an RFP is in scope.
- Dashboards your team keeps and can refresh without a consultant.
- Structured knowledge transfer at the end, so the function stays improved after the engagement closes.
What does this look like in practice?
A North American rail components manufacturer spent $12M a year on freight ($8M truckload, $3M LTL, $1M parcel) through a cost-plus 3PL with limited rate visibility. In 8 weeks, Cameo Consulting built a lane-level benchmark, ran the carrier RFP, completed a parcel zone analysis ahead of a contract negotiation, and identified LTL-to-truckload consolidation opportunities. The engagement closed with knowledge transfer so the internal team could own the freight function going forward.
Read the case → Intermodal Logistics $100M+ Intermodal Logistics ProviderA $100M+ intermodal logistics provider was growing revenue while losing money on specific customer lanes. Cameo Consulting built contribution-margin analysis at the customer-lane level and used it to rationalize the network. That work was tied to roughly $20M in net income impact, alongside maintenance software implementation across a 1,200-container fleet.
Read the case →Frequently asked questions
How long does a freight RFP take?
Plan on 6 to 10 weeks from data pull to signed rates for a mid-market shipper. Benchmarking and bid package construction take 2 to 3 weeks, carriers need 2 to 3 weeks to respond, and analysis plus negotiation fills the rest. Parcel negotiations move faster, often 4 to 6 weeks.
How much can a mid-market shipper save on freight?
Shippers with contracts unbid for 3 or more years typically find 5 to 15 percent. On a $10M freight spend, that is $500K to $1.5M a year. The number depends on where the market sits in the rate cycle, which is exactly what benchmarking establishes before anyone guesses.
Do I need to change carriers to save money?
Usually not. Much of the savings comes from re-pricing with incumbent carriers once they know the business is being benchmarked, plus mode shifts and consolidation that carriers are happy to run. A good RFP creates the negotiating pressure; switching is a last resort, not the plan.
Find out what your freight should cost
A 30-minute call is enough to tell whether there is money in your freight worth chasing. Most companies with 3-year-old contracts find out there is.
Or write directly: nick@cameoconsulting.net