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Lane History & Market Rates

What is Lane History & Market Rates?

Lane history tracking maintains a record of every shipment you've moved on specific origin-destination combinations, showing what you charged the customer, what you paid the carrier, and what margin you earned. Market rates integration connects to external data sources that provide current spot market pricing for freight lanes, giving you benchmarking data on what the broader market is paying for similar freight. Together, these tools inform pricing decisions by showing your historical performance on a lane and how your rates compare to current market conditions.

This data becomes critical during customer contract negotiations, carrier rate reviews, and bid responses. Instead of guessing what rates to propose, you work from actual historical data showing what freight on this lane has cost you and what competitors are getting paid. You negotiate from a position of knowledge rather than hoping your rates are competitive.

How Lane History & Market Rates work:

  1. Lane history accumulates automatically as you move freight. Every order that reaches delivered status adds to the lane history for its origin-destination pair. The system tracks customer rate, carrier cost, margin, transit time, and any exceptions or issues that occurred.
  2. Access lane history from the Rating module. Click Rating then select Lane History to open the lane analytics interface. This shows all lanes you've operated with summary statistics and detailed history available for each.
  3. Search for a specific lane to review its history. Enter origin and destination (city, state, or ZIP code) to pull up all shipments you've moved on that lane. The system displays them chronologically with the most recent shipments first.
  4. View rate trends over time for the lane. The lane history shows how your customer rates and carrier costs have changed over weeks or months. You'll see if rates are rising, falling, or stable, helping you identify when to push for rate increases or when to expect carrier pushback on your offers.
  5. Analyze margin performance by lane. See average margin, best margin, worst margin, and margin trends for the lane. This identifies your most and least profitable lanes and highlights routes where margin has been eroding over time.
  6. Review volume history to understand lane importance. The system shows how many loads you've moved on this lane monthly or quarterly. High-volume lanes might justify more aggressive margin protection while low-volume lanes might not warrant investment in developing carrier relationships.
  7. Access market rate data for comparison if integrated. If you have a market rates integration (DAT, Truckstop, or other freight data sources), click "View Market Rates" for the lane to see current spot market averages. This external data shows what brokers and carriers are getting paid for similar freight right now.
  8. Compare your historical rates to current market benchmarks. Put your historical rates alongside current market rates to see if you're above market (potentially overpriced and at risk of losing the business) or below market (underpriced and leaving money on the table). Use this for rate adjustment decisions.
  9. Use historical data during contract negotiations. When a customer wants to renegotiate rates, pull up the lane history showing your actual costs and margin over the contract period. Document that carrier rates have increased 12% while your customer rates stayed flat, supporting your request for increases.
  10. Export lane history for deeper analysis or reporting. Download lane history data to Excel or CSV format for deeper analysis, executive reporting, or inclusion in bid responses that require historical performance data showing your track record on specific lanes.

What it means for you:

Rate negotiations become data-driven conversations instead of subjective arguments. When a customer pushes for a rate reduction, you show them that your margin on their freight has dropped from 18% to 12% over the past year because carrier costs increased while your rates stayed flat. When a carrier requests a rate increase, you show them market data indicating spot rates for this lane have actually decreased 5% recently, pushing back on the increase with evidence.

The strategic value compounds over time. After a year of lane history, you know which customers and lanes are consistently profitable, which ones lose money, and which ones have volatile margins that create risk. This knowledge drives better business decisions about which accounts to pursue, which lanes to develop carrier relationships on, and where to focus margin improvement efforts.