Most trucking executives want an insight into what other carriers are experiencing in their network so they can make decisions for the direction of their own company.
Is my competition experiencing what I am experiencing in my network? Has the market started to turn or not? When and where do I plan to expand my service area?
This market intelligence is critical for corporate planning. Your ability to correctly plan the future of your business leads to your success, and your inability to correctly plan (or avoidance thereof) compounds your struggle for survival.
For trucking market intelligence, we read all the industry indexes, competitor press releases, attend conferences, and read articles from trusted sources in a pursuit of determining when the pendulum swings (good or bad) so we can correctly plan our response to stay at least one step ahead of the competition. The problem is that the industry indexes, press releases, conferences, and articles are at least a week and even months behind what you are experiencing today in your own network, and not specific enough to the markets you service or would like to serve.
For network market intelligence, trucking professionals rely on their own historical experiences, feedback from our sales team on the ground, available spot loads in the market, tonnage reports by geography, and the relationships we have within the transportation sector. The problem with these sources is that they are unverifiable partial assessments, and they are also weeks and months behind what you are experiencing today.
In network market intelligence, you've heard it stated, especially during bid season, the market is determined by the most desperate carrier in the market. Smaller carriers believe desperate larger carriers with capacity hurt their ability to secure bid awards. Large carriers believe that desperate smaller carriers set the bid price points that hurt their ability to secure profitable bid rates.
While there is some merit to both points of view, I don't believe either is entirely correct. Most small/medium carriers are a large factor in several markets. Likewise, most large/medium carriers are a small factor in many markets.
In network market intelligence, carriers can also make the mistake of believing tonnage trends or spot loads in a market are an indication of desperation in a given geographic market. The reality is that if one large carrier is over-booked in a market today by 50 loads and 10 other carriers each are under-booked by 5, the market is not balanced, you have 10 of the 11 carriers in the market significantly impacting the rates in that market even though the tonnage or spot loads may be at normal levels.
So how are you to determine your plan using market intelligence, both overall corporate and network geography wise, if you don t have access to the verified ups and downs that carriers are experiencing today in their geographical markets?
You can start with the MapGraphiX IndeX
A daily index of the over-booked and under-booked markets, which factors individual carrier volumes in today s individual markets.
The MapGraphiX IndeX is comprised of carriers who have opted in to a fully anonymized summary of their MapGraphiX Balance Maps each day. The MapGraphiX Balance Maps uses patented technology used by industry leading carriers to internally calculate the severity of over-booked and under-booked they are experiencing today in their markets. These calculations are exactly as their operations planners and network gatekeepers count their available trucks and loads, and communicate those needs to internally solve for daily market balance.
Carriers participating in the MapGraphiX IndeX can see the forest and the trees.
They have unprecedented daily insight into what the overall market and individual geographic markets are experiencing today, along with the historical trends of the overall IndeX and the individual geographic markets indices.
Every few years the pendulum swings where the demand for trucking capacity peaks benefiting carriers of all sizes, and then pendulum swings the other way where the market demand puts carriers of all sizes fighting for survival.
It is in the middle, like where we are today, that separates the best planning strategists to lead to financial stability and strength. I believe a carrier's financial strength begins with market balance. It's time to gain an edge with the insight you are looking for and add MapGraphiX and the MapGraphiX IndeX as a trusted source.
Robert VanEaton has over 25 years of carrier experience as a finance executive, network and pricing executive, network strategist, pricing analyst, planner, driver manager and CSR. MapGraphiX, based in Shreveport, Louisiana, a software company, provides real-time capacity balance mapping and network strategy solutions for trucking companies.
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