Network optimization: a network that fits how your customers buy today.
Most freight networks were built for a business that has since changed. We find where yours has drifted, what the drift costs, and which changes pay back first.
- Starting point
- Six months of your shipment history
- What we look at
- The whole network, not just the routes
- What you get
- Moves ranked by savings and effort
- Who does the work
- Analysts who sit beside the dispatchers
What network optimization means
Your network is every decision behind a shipment: where it ships from, how often, in what size, on what mode, on which days and in what stop order. Network optimization looks at all of those together and resets the ones that no longer fit. Rate is one lever. It is rarely the biggest.
How networks degrade
Networks rarely break. They drift, one reasonable decision at a time, until the freight no longer runs the way the network was designed.
- A new customer gets added to the nearest route, whether it fits or not.
- Order patterns shift, and the delivery days and minimums set years ago stay put.
- A DC moves or a plant adds a line, and the lanes around it never get redrawn.
- Freight keeps riding the mode it always has after the math changes.
- Accessorials creep in a few dollars at a time, and nobody reconciles them.
When customers and shipping change
Customers order smaller and more often. Delivery windows tighten, and retailers fine late or short shipments. Carriers price LTL on density. Each change is small. Together they mean the network that was right five years ago can be costing you money today, even while your rates look fine.
Where the savings are, beyond the routes
- Order size and frequency. Minimums, delivery days and how often each customer gets a truck.
- Mode. LTL that should ride a consolidated truckload, and truckload that should be multi-stop or intermodal.
- Cost to serve. What each customer actually costs you, so pricing and service levels can follow.
- Inbound freight. Freight buried in supplier pricing on prepaid-and-add terms.
- Accessorials and detention. The charges that never made it into the quote.
- Fleet and facilities. Fleet size, network design and site selection.
Routing as a service is one part
When the routes are the problem, RaaS+™ puts NT’s routing desk on them: daily route sequencing, fleet sizing and planners who answer for the result. Re-sequencing alone typically cuts 8 to 9% of miles. More on RaaS+™ →
How it starts
Send six months of shipment history. Within a week an NT analyst walks you through what we found and which moves to make first. The findings are yours either way, and if you want help running them, our managed transportation team puts the plan to work.
The five places NT most often finds savings: Where mid-market freight networks quietly leak money →