For many companies, freight is one of the largest variable costs in the business. Yet it often sits low on the list of topics that are regularly reviewed and discussed. Attention is instead directed towards purchasing, staffing, marketing or production – areas where control and follow-up are considered self-evident. Freight is often left to run quietly in the background, as long as nothing visibly goes wrong.
The result is that freight costs are allowed to continue unchecked, despite being highly influenceable in practice.
Why freight costs often escape active management
In many organisations, freight is treated as a necessary afterthought. Something that has to work, but rarely an area where ways of working are actively improved or developed. At the same time, freight cuts across several parts of the business. Warehouse and logistics teams handle the operational work, finance tracks costs, customer service deals with delivery questions, and sales or e-commerce influence delivery promises.
When so many functions are involved, responsibility is often fragmented. No one owns the full picture, which makes it difficult to understand what freight actually costs, why it costs what it does, and which decisions shape the outcome over time. In our work at Shiplink, we often see companies where freight works on a day-to-day basis, but lacks oversight at a more strategic level. This is rarely a conscious choice. More often, freight has simply never found a natural place in ongoing business management.
What actually drives freight costs in everyday operations
It is easy to assume that freight costs are mainly determined by carrier agreements and price lists. In reality, that is rarely the full story. A significant share of cost is created through everyday decisions and ways of working, for example:
- how carriers and services are selected for each shipment
- how often manual exceptions are used
- how accurate weight, dimensions and address data are
- how much time is spent on administration and corrections
- how consistently freight choices are made over time
When these decisions are made without shared guidelines and without follow-up, costs arise that are not always immediately visible. Instead, they accumulate gradually and become part of everyday operations, making them difficult to question and even harder to improve.
The difference between having rates and having control
Many companies invest considerable effort in negotiating favourable freight agreements. This is important, but it is not the same as having control over freight costs. Control is not just about what a shipment costs, but about why a particular option is chosen, whether decisions are made consistently, and whether costs are proportionate to delivery requirements and customer promises.
Without this understanding, freight becomes reactive. Action is taken only when something turns out to be unexpectedly expensive or when a delivery does not work as intended, rather than decisions being guided proactively from the outset. The difference between the two approaches is often greater than expected.
How companies with control work differently
Companies that feel they have better control over their freight costs typically view freight as part of their business logic, not as an isolated step at the end of the process. They work with clear principles for how freight choices should be made and ensure that decisions can be followed up over time.
We often see that when companies start working more structurally with freight, both cost variation and internal strain decrease. Work becomes more predictable and less dependent on individual people, even before any major changes are introduced. Freight shifts from something that is merely handled to something that is actively managed.
First steps towards better control without major projects
Gaining better control over freight costs rarely requires a large-scale initiative from the start. More often, it begins with creating visibility into how freight decisions are currently made, consolidating responsibility and decision-making even if execution is distributed, and tracking costs over time rather than only per order.
Small structural adjustments can deliver quick results, both in lower costs and in a calmer day-to-day workflow. Freight becomes a stable part of the operation, rather than a recurring source of friction.
Summary
Freight costs are rarely the result of a single factor. They emerge from the interaction between decisions, ways of working and structure. When freight is treated as something that simply has to function, rather than something that can be actively managed, companies lose both money and insight.
These are questions that frequently arise in conversations with organisations seeking greater control over their freight. By viewing freight as an influenceable part of the business, it becomes possible to create greater predictability, lower costs and a more sustainable day-to-day operation – without turning freight into a major standalone project.
