The Capacity You’re Overlooking Is Already on the Road
Content for this blog came from the TIA Livestream Savvy 3PLs Finding New Capacity to Combat ELP Enforcement.
The big picture: Millions of cubic feet of truck capacity move across the United States every day completely empty. Savvy brokers are starting to figure out how to use it.
That was the core argument made by Doug Clark of Clark Consulting, Russ Jones of Private Fleet Net Zero, and Jeff Brashares of CMA-CGM on a recent TIA Livestream focused on private fleets, dedicated fleets, and ocean containers as an untapped capacity source for freight brokers.
How the freight recession created the moment: The panel opened with context. COVID drove a surge in goods demand, which flooded the market with new trucks and unqualified drivers. Finance companies extended terms to struggling carriers hoping demand would recover. It didn’t. The result was a freight recession that lasted four and a half years instead of the typical 16 to 18 months, with legitimate carriers squeezed out by competitors who weren’t playing by the rules.
Now enforcement is tightening, unqualified carriers are exiting the market, and demand is expected to climb again driven by new manufacturing facilities and broader technology investment. The capacity crunch is coming. The question is: where will brokers find trucks when it arrives?
The private fleet opportunity: Private fleets represent 45% of trucks on the road. Sherwin-Williams, Walmart, US Foods and companies like them employ their own drivers and own their own equipment. Their trucks are newer and safer with lower accident rates than average, and their drivers are better paid and better qualified. The key part that matters to brokers, two thirds of large private fleets hold for-hire authority and are actively looking to generate backhaul revenue.
The catch is that their backhauling has to be a precise match. A private fleet carrier is not going to wait six hours or drive hundreds of miles out of route for someone else’s freight. But when the match works, they will typically haul at a discount that substantially improves broker margins.
Dedicated fleets and containers follow the same logic: Dedicated fleets behave similarly. A large shipper contracts a carrier to operate a fixed number of trucks on their behalf, and those trucks deadhead back empty the majority of the time. Clark described how he used this tool, building a gain-share arrangement with dedicated fleet operators in the mid-2000s that generated six million dollars in top-line revenue at 20% margins within six months, simply by filling trucks that were already running empty.
Ocean containers add another layer. With roughly 46 million TEUs moving in and around the United States at any given time, and containers regularly deadheading back to port after inland delivery, there is significant available capacity that most brokers have never considered. Two thirds of 53-foot trailers only use two thirds of their space. A 40-foot ocean container holds roughly the same freight volume and typically moves at a lower rate.
Why digital freight matching is the missing piece: The reason this capacity has stayed largely invisible is fragmentation. There are approximately 3,000 drayage companies in the country, and they do not talk to each other. Private fleets do not want their competitors knowing which lanes they are running empty. The solution is a digital freight matching platform that connects brokers to these fleets privately, without exposing available capacity publicly.
Jones outlined what brokers should look for in a platform: a network of at least 50,000 trucks across 50 or more fleets, coverage of a broker’s key buying lanes, matching that accounts for at least 15 load attributes including day, time, cargo type and equipment, redundant options for each lane, and a fee structure that delivers at least a 10x return on investment.
The cargo theft angle: One benefit the panel hadn’t originally planned to discuss emerged organically. Sherwin-Williams is not going to steal your freight. Private and dedicated fleet carriers carry compliant insurance, employ qualified drivers, and have strong incentives to protect their operating authority. In an environment where cargo theft hit an estimated 35 billion dollars last year and is growing at 24% annually, that is not a small consideration.
The bottom line: This capacity has existed for decades. What is new is the technology to see it, match to it, and access it at scale without a dedicated team of people building integrations manually. For brokers looking for a way to differentiate on both cost and service quality as the market tightens, it is, as the panel put it more than once, a blue ocean hiding in plain sight.
