Industry Insights
Why Brands Lose Leverage When Shipping Data Is Fragmented
As brands grow, shipping becomes one of their largest operational costs—and one of their least controlled.
Not because brands don't care.
Not because teams aren't paying attention.
But because the data that defines shipping decisions is almost never in one place.
And when shipping data is fragmented, brands quietly lose leverage.
Fragmentation changes who holds power
In most shipping relationships, no single party sees the full picture.
- Brands see orders and totals
- 3PLs see fulfillment activity
- Carriers see delivery and billing events
Each party operates from a different dataset, at a different time, with different incentives.
When a billing question comes up—an unexpected charge, an adjustment, a discrepancy—brands are usually the last to know and the least equipped to explain it.
That's not a failure of partnership.
It's a failure of visibility.
The cost of "after-the-fact" understanding
Shipping invoices don't arrive in real time. They arrive weeks later, often bundled, adjusted, and summarized.
By then:
- The shipment is long gone
- The context is lost
- The decision window has closed
At that point, brands aren't managing shipping—they're reacting to it.
And reactive positions are weak positions.
Why spreadsheets don't restore leverage
Many teams try to solve this by exporting data and reconciling manually.
Spreadsheets become the bridge between systems that were never designed to talk to each other.
This works at low volume.
It fails completely at scale.
Manual reconciliation:
- Introduces delay
- Increases error
- Depends on tribal knowledge
- Breaks when teams change
Worst of all, it still doesn't create a shared reality between brands, vendors, and carriers.
Leverage comes from shared truth, not pressure
True leverage doesn't come from disputing harder or negotiating louder.
It comes from alignment.
When every shipment can be traced from order → fulfillment → carrier → invoice, conversations change:
- Questions become specific
- Disputes become shorter
- Decisions become proactive
Brands don't need to assert leverage when they operate from clarity.
The data speaks for itself.
Why we're building RateRunners this way
RateRunners wasn't designed to centralize power.
It was designed to centralize truth.
By creating a shared platform where brands and 3PLs operate from the same shipment and billing data, leverage stops being adversarial and starts being structural.
Everyone sees the same numbers.
Everyone understands the same costs.
Everyone moves faster.
And when shipping data is no longer fragmented, brands don't have to fight for leverage—they simply have it.