Case study — Parcel & LTL distribution
The fleet made money.
Half of it paid for the other half.
A hundred small costs, none of them attached to a consignment. The average was healthy, and the average was hiding two lanes that had lost money every month for three years.
Before
An average with nothing underneath it.
Trilok knew what the fleet cost to run in a month, and what it billed in a month. Between those two figures there was nothing — no cost that belonged to a lane, a branch or a consignment.
Loading and unloading was paid in cash at each branch and reconciled against a bundle of chits at month-end. Part loads were billed on weight while the vehicle filled up on volume, so a truck could leave full and under-billed. Every branch kept its own book, and each book was correct.
After
Cost that follows the consignment.
Line-haul, handling, branch overhead and last-mile are apportioned to each consignment as it moves. A lane report now shows revenue and cost on the same row, per branch pair, for the period asked for.
Cash paid at a branch is recorded against the trip when it is paid, from a phone, with a photograph of the chit. Volumetric weight is captured at booking, so the billed figure is the greater of the two rather than whichever was written down.
Two lanes were withdrawn. Three were repriced and retained. The customers on the repriced lanes did not leave, because the conversation came with the arithmetic attached.
“I knew the business made money. I could not tell you which half of it was paying for the other half, and for three years I had been growing the wrong half.”
Managing partner · Trilok Parcel Service
What actually moved the needle
Three changes, in the order they mattered.
01
A cost that travels with the box
Apportionment is unglamorous and it was the whole job. Once every cost had a consignment to land on, the lane report wrote itself and the argument about which lanes to keep became a short one.
02
Volume as well as weight
Captured at booking rather than argued at invoicing. On light-and-bulky freight it moved the billed figure on roughly one consignment in six, and it removed a recurring dispute rather than creating one.
03
Branch cash, recorded when it is spent
Not to police the branches — to date the spend. A hamali payment recorded four weeks late cannot be attached to the trip that caused it, and an unattached cost is one that some other lane silently pays for.
How QuamBase handles parcel & LTL distribution →
Cost per consignment, generalised: unit economics per trip →
Your fleet, your numbers
Bring one branch pair. We’ll price it.
More customers
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