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In the Gartner® Analyst report

Gartner, Market Guide for Benchmarking Services for Transportation Rates and Logistics Performance Metrics

Published 13 October 2021 - Analyst: Brian Whitlock

Recommendations. Supply chain leaders responsible for logistics strategy and operational performance should:

• Use benchmark information judiciously by making sure they understand the context of the comparative data and how it relates to their business.
• Decide which type of metrics they need to benchmark — transportation rates or detailed logistics metrics — as they typically come from different sources.
• Choose the right benchmarking service provider, depending on the depth of metrics that needs to be evaluated. Not all sources provide the most detailed metric benchmarks.

Transportation Rate Benchmarking

The perennial question — Am I paying too much for transportation? — is difficult to determine. Most transport rate benchmarking services offer broad comparisons of freight costs by lane, service and mode. However, there can be differences across services.

For many industries, transportation costs continue to be one of the highest of all logistics costs. This is more true in today’s volatile markets. A transportation rate benchmark can help provide an understanding of what rates logistics leaders should pay for transportation and provide factual data to help improve decision making when sourcing transportation services. It can also help logistics leaders determine whether they should put lanes up for bid or stay with current providers.

Although benchmarking transportation rates may appear simple, there are challenges in acquiring data that can effectively be used to compare. The factors involved in transportation vary by more than cost alone. Thus, logistics leaders must ensure that rate benchmarks will provide exact comparisons to their needs.

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