Transportation Cost Analysis Checklist

Export the prior quarter's gallons and spend from Comdata, EFS, WEX, or your fuel-card provider. Cross-reference against ELD odometer miles (Motive, Samsara, Geotab) to compute fuel cost per mile and fleet-average MPG. Flag any truck running >0.5 MPG below fleet average for a maintenance review — usually a DPF/regen issue or a heavy-foot driver.

Pull PM, breakdown, and tire spend by VIN from Fleetio, Whip Around, RTA, or shop invoices. Separate scheduled PM (A/B/C service) from unscheduled repairs — high unscheduled-repair ratios indicate a unit approaching replacement. Include aftertreatment work (DPF cleaning, DEF dosing, EGR) which is often the largest line item on post-2010 tractors.

Combine auto liability, physical damage, cargo, and general liability premiums (Great West, Progressive Commercial, Sentry, Northland). Add IRP apportioned registration, IFTA fuel-tax true-up, UCR annual fee, and HVUT Form 2290. Allocate per unit to get fixed cost per truck per month.

For owned tractors and trailers, pull depreciation schedules from QuickBooks or NetSuite. For leased units, pull monthly lease payments and residual exposure. Flag any unit whose maintenance plus depreciation exceeds the replacement-cycle threshold (typically $0.30/mile combined).

Pull settlements from the TMS (McLeod, Truckbase, AscendTMS). Compute blended CPM across company drivers (CPM, all-miles vs practical) and percentage-of-revenue owner-operators. Include layover, detention, stop pay, and safety/MPG bonuses — these often add $0.04–$0.08 CPM that gets missed in flat-rate quoting.

Add employer FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers' comp premium (often $4–$8 per $100 of driver wages depending on state and mod), health insurance contribution, and 401(k) match. Workers' comp is highly state-variable; pull the current rate from your broker, don't use last year's number.

Include dispatchers, driver managers, safety director, DQ file administrator, and accounting. Standard industry ratio is one dispatcher per 25–40 trucks; if your ratio is materially off, note whether dispatch turnover or load complexity explains it.

Sum Tenstreet/DriverReach subscriptions, job-board spend, sign-on bonuses, orientation pay, and Part 380 entry-level driver training delivery costs. Add Clearinghouse query fees, MVR pulls, DOT physical reimbursements, and pre-employment drug screens. Cost-per-seated-driver should land in the $4,000–$8,000 range for most carriers.

Run the deadhead report out of the TMS for the quarter. Industry benchmark is 8–12% deadhead for truckload; anything north of 15% on a recurring lane is a backhaul problem worth solving with DAT, Truckstop, or a dedicated customer.

Compute revenue per loaded mile (RPM) by origin-destination pair, net of FSC. Compare against your fully-loaded CPM from the operating-cost rollup. Flag any lane running below CPM + 10% margin — candidate for re-rate or drop at contract renewal.

Pull arrival/departure timestamps from ELD geofencing and compare against free-time terms on the rate con. Calculate uninvoiced detention dollars. The fix is upstream: driver app prompts at arrival/departure plus dispatcher follow-up at delivery, not a quarterly recovery exercise.

Document which shippers are responsible for the bulk of leakage, draft updated rate-con language for the next renewal, and configure driver-app prompts in Motive/Samsara to auto-flag arrivals and departures. Loop the largest two offenders into a customer-success conversation before quarter close.

For brokerage or overflow capacity, pull rate-con totals by MC. Verify each active carrier has a current FMCSA snapshot, valid COI naming your company as certificate holder, signed carrier packet, and W-9 on file. Carriers without current docs get paused until refreshed.

For the top 20 carriers by spend, compute on-time pickup, on-time delivery, claims frequency, and tracking compliance (MacroPoint, project44, FourKites). Anything below 95% on-time or above 1% claims-by-load is a candidate for volume reduction.

For each customer contract up for renewal in the next 90 days, decide: re-rate up, hold flat, or walk away. Base the call on lane profitability from the routing analysis and on customer payment behavior (DSO over 45 days is a yellow flag).

Pull toll spend (PrePass, Bestpass, EZPass), oversize/overweight permit costs, and state scale fees. For dedicated lanes through tolled corridors (I-95, Ohio Turnpike, IL/IN/PA), this can run $0.04–$0.08 CPM and belongs in the customer rate, not eaten by the carrier.

Sum TPA/consortium fees (Foley, J.J. Keller, DOT Compliance Group), Clearinghouse query fees (annual full + limited), DOT physicals, and DQ-file software. Verify random-pool rates met the 50%/10% annual minimums; falling short is a CSA finding, not a budget question.

Add OOS roadside fines, DataQs challenge spend, accident-related repair deductibles, and any FMCSA Compliance Review remediation. Note BASIC categories trending up — Unsafe Driving and HOS Compliance are the most expensive to ignore because insurance reads them at renewal.

Bring the BASIC trend, the underlying inspection or crash records, and a remediation plan (driver retraining, equipment fixes, dispatch coaching). The Safety Director owns the corrective action; ops cost analysis just surfaces the trigger.

Combine fuel, maintenance, fixed, depreciation, driver pay, payroll burden, overhead, tolls, and compliance into a single fully-loaded cost per mile. Break out variable vs fixed. This is the number sales quotes against and the number lane-profitability analyses key off.

Walk through CPM movement quarter-over-quarter, top three cost drivers, top three margin-leak lanes, and the renewal/walk-away list. Capture decisions and sign-off so the next quarter has a baseline.