Hiring a Strategic Planning Consultant
in Logistics & Supply Chain

The short answer

A freight plan lists lanes and contracts while the operating ratio stays flat because no one has chosen whether dedicated volume or spot freight sets the mix. For logistics and freight companies, this shows up in a particular place. The numbers that carry the answer are revenue per loaded mile and driver turnover, and the complication specific to this industry is that dedicated freight dilutes margin and is also the only thing that fixes driver turnover. The general version of this problem and the one you are actually in have different first moves.

Each year the network team proposes adding lanes or extending dedicated runs, finance adds the projected miles and drivers required, the total exceeds available tractors and cash, and the difference is trimmed across the board so every contract and every spot lane survives at a smaller scale. The process never forces a choice between locking in steady dedicated freight that keeps seats filled and chasing higher revenue per loaded mile on spot moves that leave more empty miles.

An outside planner is brought in to force that choice yet the real limit is not meeting structure. Dedicated accounts protect driver schedules and cut turnover while spot freight raises revenue per mile; dropping either one creates visible losses for sales or operations, so the output remains a blended target that preserves both without changing the deadhead percentage or the operating ratio.

The second reason to bring someone in is narrower and practical: only an outside party has the hours to separate five years of loaded and empty miles by dedicated versus spot, match each segment to driver turnover and revenue per mile, and show the arithmetic for shifting the mix. Running the network day to day leaves no capacity for that disaggregation.

Corporate Strategy & Transformation (catalog id t5) produces the arithmetic on moving the dedicated share versus the spot share, states the resulting change in revenue per loaded mile, deadhead percentage, and driver turnover, and shows what operating ratio would follow if each case held. It does not decide which group absorbs the loss when the numbers require reducing one book of business.

How to tell this is actually your problem

These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.

✓ Revenue per loaded mile and driver turnover have both remained unchanged for two planning cycles while the dedicated percentage of total miles has stayed the same.
✓ The same dedicated accounts and the same spot lanes appear on every annual list with no terminations recorded.
✓ The budget for tractors and drivers is approved before the freight mix is finalized rather than the other way around.

The move that usually makes it worse. Bringing in a facilitator to run the offsite when the real constraint is that someone must accept fewer dedicated miles or fewer spot loads, which leaves the operating ratio and turnover numbers unchanged.

Who this is for — and who it is not

It is for you if you run or finance a freight company and the last plan contained no decision to stop doing something. It is the situation where the numbers are available but nobody has put them in an order that produces a decision.

It is not for you if Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.

Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.

What this looks like when the analysis is actually run

Below is an excerpt from a real run of this analysis on a freight company. It is a sample profile rather than a customer, and it is unedited engine output — this is the format you get, on your own numbers.

The subject is Ridgeway Freight Systems, a sample company profile used for testing rather than a customer — $240M revenue, 900 drivers.

This is one move out of a full analysis. Read a complete report — every page, no email required.

What the engine does with this question

This question routes to Corporate Strategy & Transformation, one of 29 engagements the platform runs. For logistics and freight companies it works through revenue per loaded mile, driver turnover, deadhead percentage and operating ratio, then produces the sequence rather than a list of options — which move first, what it funds, and the observation that would say the sequence is wrong.

You watch the analysis get built before paying anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.

Questions people ask about this

What does a strategic planning consultant charge?

An independent facilitator running an offsite and producing a plan is commonly £8k–£30k. A firm running a full planning cycle with analysis is £60k–£200k. The range is wide because the two jobs are different: one is facilitation, one is evidence. Decide which you are short of before you compare quotes, because the cheap version of the wrong one is still wasted.

How long should a strategic plan be?

Short enough that the trade-offs are visible. A useful plan states where you will win, what you will stop, and the two or three things that must be true. Most of the length in a typical planning document is evidence supporting decisions that were already made, which belongs in an appendix nobody needs to read twice.

Should the plan cover three years or one?

Set direction over three and commit resource over one. Three-year financial detail is invented precision in almost every business, and treating it as a commitment makes the plan brittle. The parts that genuinely need a three-year view are capacity, capital and capability, because those are the ones that cannot be changed inside a year.

Is this different in logistics & supply chain than in other industries?

Materially, yes. Dedicated freight dilutes margin and is also the only thing that fixes driver turnover — which changes both the diagnosis and the order of the fixes. The metrics that decide it here are revenue per loaded mile, driver turnover, deadhead percentage, and an answer built on industry-general benchmarks will usually point at the wrong one first.

What data do I need before this analysis is worth running for a freight company?

Less than most people expect. Your last twelve months of revenue and cost split the way you already split it, plus whatever you hold on revenue per loaded mile and driver turnover. The analysis is explicit about what it is assuming where your data stops, which is more useful than waiting for numbers you may never have.

When is Percision the wrong tool?

Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.

Does Percision replace a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, or AI implementation team?

Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.