In many companies, freight works in practice. Shipments are booked, goods are dispatched, and customers receive their orders. At the same time, many organisations feel that freight-related questions consume a disproportionate amount of energy. Issues need to be resolved quickly, ways of working differ between teams, and meaningful improvements are difficult to push through.
Often, this is not because freight is inherently complex. It is because responsibility for it is unclear.
Why freight so often falls between functions
Freight touches several parts of the organisation at the same time. Warehouse and logistics teams handle the practical work. Finance follows up costs. Customer service responds to delivery-related questions. Sales and e-commerce influence the delivery promises made to customers. Everyone is involved, but few have the mandate to take end-to-end responsibility.
When responsibility is fragmented, freight is handled in parts rather than as a coherent process. Decisions are made where the need arises, often with the best intentions, but without shared principles or long-term follow-up. In our work at Shiplink, we frequently see companies where freight functions day to day, yet no one truly owns the question over time. This is rarely an explicit choice. More often, it is something that has evolved alongside the business.
What happens when no one fully owns freight
When freight lacks clear ownership, the same types of consequences tend to appear regardless of industry or volume. In everyday operations, this is often visible through:
- ways of working becoming person-dependent and differing between teams
- questions and exceptions getting stuck between functions
- the same issues being solved repeatedly
- decisions being made locally without shared principles
- improvements being difficult to sustain over time
In practice, this leads to more manual effort, more interruptions, and a sense that freight constantly requires extra attention. Even when volumes are moderate and requirements are not particularly demanding, freight can feel unnecessarily complicated simply because overall responsibility is unclear.
The difference between executing freight and owning freight
In many organisations, there are people responsible for making sure freight gets done. They book shipments, follow up, and resolve issues when they arise. This is important work, but it is not the same as owning the freight process.
Owning freight means having the mandate to:
- set frameworks and principles that apply over time
- consolidate decisions and create consistency in how work is done
- follow up on how freight actually performs in practice
When this distinction is clear, freight becomes less reactive and more predictable.
How companies with clear freight ownership operate
Companies that experience freight as smooth and free from constant friction have often made a deliberate choice around responsibility. They have ensured that freight has a clear owner, even if the actual work is carried out by multiple teams.
This allows decisions to be consolidated, ways of working to become more consistent, and improvements to be driven more effectively. We often see that when freight ownership is clear, the number of internal questions decreases, reliance on individual people is reduced, and the organisation achieves a calmer operational rhythm around deliveries. Freight becomes not only easier to manage, but also easier to develop over time.
First steps towards clearer responsibility without reorganisation
Creating clearer freight ownership does not require an immediate reorganisation or new roles. It often starts with clarifying what is actually owned. Which decisions should be shared, which principles should apply, and who is responsible for ensuring they are followed up.
By separating execution from ownership, it is possible to create structure without slowing the business down. Small clarifications around responsibility and mandate can have a significant impact, both on efficiency and on the working environment.
Summary
Freight rarely becomes complicated because it is technically difficult. It becomes complicated when responsibility, mandate, and follow-up are unclear. When no one owns the full picture, organisations are forced to compensate with extra work and quick fixes.
These are questions that frequently arise in conversations with companies seeking better structure in their freight management. With clear ownership, freight instead becomes a stable and predictable part of the business—something that works quietly in the background and creates space to focus on the core operation.
A natural next step is often to review how ways of working and systems can support this ownership in practice, so that the freight flow runs as smoothly as the responsibility is clear.
