Transportation and Route Optimization
Fewer miles, fuller trailers, tighter windows.
- Typical duration
- 5 to 10 weeks
- Deliverables
- 5 core artifacts
Overview
Freight is the line item most exposed to small structural improvements. Better consolidation, smarter mode selection, tighter routing, and a bid built on realistic lane volumes each move the number, and they compound.
We model your lanes, run vehicle routing and load building optimization against real constraints, and build the analysis behind procurement events. Where routing happens daily, we help operationalize it so the optimization runs every morning rather than once during a project.
What you get out of it
- Reduced cost per unit shipped at equal or better on time performance
- Consolidation and mode shift opportunities quantified by lane
- Fact based carrier bid strategy and award scenarios
- Routing that respects real constraints instead of idealized ones
Capabilities
What the work actually involves.
Vehicle routing and scheduling
Capacitated routing with time windows, driver hours, multi-stop sequencing, backhauls, and mixed fleets solved to practical optimality.
Load building and consolidation
Order pooling across days, customers, and modes, with cube and weight constraints and the appointment realities that determine whether a plan survives contact with the dock.
Mode and carrier strategy
Parcel, less than truckload, truckload, intermodal, and pool distribution compared on true landed cost including transit time, damage, and inventory effects.
Procurement and bid analytics
Lane level volume forecasts, scenario based award optimization, and a defensible view of what your freight should cost in the current market.
Fleet versus purchased transport
Private fleet sizing and utilization analysis against dedicated and common carrier alternatives, including the fixed cost you keep when volume drops.
Questions
Things people ask first.
- Do we need a transportation management system first?
- No. A TMS executes and settles; it rarely optimizes well on its own. We have delivered routing improvements against spreadsheet driven operations and alongside every major platform.
- Will drivers and planners accept computer generated routes?
- Only if the constraints are right. We spend real time with dispatch capturing the unwritten rules, because a mathematically optimal route that violates one of them gets overridden on day two and never trusted again.
Next step
Have a transportation question?
Send the decision you are facing. A first conversation is a working session, and it usually clarifies scope more than a proposal would.