On Thursday, FreightWaves announced the launch of StakUp, an online platform designed for truckload carriers to let them benchmark their monthly financial and operational performance against that of their peers.
In the dynamic transportation and logistics industry, there is always room for growth through improvement, optimization or positive change. StakUp’s data and intelligence empower companies to direct that growth.
“As the trucking industry enters a period of lower revenue, rising costs and compressing margins, it’s more important now than ever for carriers to know how they compare with their peers — to determine how much is ‘my company’ versus ‘the market,’” said Spencer Piland, FreightWaves chief financial officer and chief operating officer. “At FreightWaves, we’ve long believed that data can drive better decisions within an organization and hope that the StakUp offering can help all carriers focus their operational efforts both in strong and lean times.”
Free to new users for the first year, StakUp combines superior data analytics with a simple, best-in-class user experience and a low cost. Carriers only need to enter a minimum of 12 initial data points to begin measuring themselves against peer fleets. By participating with their companies’ financial and operational data, users receive immediate results in an aggregated and anonymous format.
As trucking markets change, carriers adjust their operations to optimize for different metrics: In a loose market, they may focus on an asset utilization like empty-mile percentage, while in a hot market, rate per loaded mile might be important. StakUp allows trucking carriers to submit a wide range of operational and financial data — up to 29 monthly data points — and compare their performance to that of their peers on a monthly basis, capturing how transportation providers react as markets shift.
“Every carrier should have the opportunity to make data-driven decisions in order to grow and succeed,” said Will Hopping, data integration manager. “We launched StakUp as a part of our continued effort to provide transparency, education and data accessibility to all industry participants, and I’m excited for the many ways in which small and midsized carriers will be able to take advantage of this free opportunity to benchmark their financial and operational performance.”
StakUp will greatly benefit small and medium-size carriers that want to improve their decision-making and efficiency, and understand the strategies their peers are implementing in a given period. The number of data points available for comparison and the monthly reporting cadence provide enough granularity for users to understand not only their over- and underperformance relative to peers, but also the trade-offs and choices that carriers are making in how they operate their fleets.
Beyond dollars-and-cents metrics like operating revenue and fixed overhead expenses, StakUp helps carriers compare their driver retention, fleet count and fuel consumption trends to industry peers. Comparisons to other fleets can be narrowed further to specific types of trailing equipment, fleet size or overall mileage. Those results can be presented in a number of ways, including gauges, charts and lists.
If you’re an asset based truckload carrier, sign up here and see how you stack up against your peers.