FreightMarks gives trucking companies a common benchmarking standard by combining mapped general-ledger data with load and dispatch information to produce more than 100 comparable financial and operational metrics.
KSM Transport Advisors introduced FreightMarks as a service available to FreightMath clients at no additional charge. Its purpose is to help carriers control costs, understand profitability, and compare performance using consistently defined data.
Why FreightMarks?
Trucking profitability depends on cost control and operating efficiency, but fragmented and inconsistent financial data makes meaningful comparison difficult. Many carriers also lack the resources to build activity-based costing models without significant expense.
FreightMarks addresses those barriers by:
- Standardizing general-ledger data: A structured FreightMarks chart of accounts creates uniform reporting across participating carriers and operating modes.
- Applying cost allocations: Direct, ratio-based, and percentage methods distribute revenue and expense across fleet types and operating categories. Automated and AI-enhanced allocation helps assign a fair share even when carrier guidance is limited.
- Providing peer benchmarks: Carriers can compare major cost drivers such as driver wages, fuel, maintenance, and insurance, along with FreightMath measures including operating ratio and margin.
How FreightMarks Works
Participating carriers submit monthly general-ledger data. KSMTA's mapping and reporting process aligns each account with the standardized chart of accounts, then combines the financial information with operating data.
Reports include:
- Revenue performance: Linehaul, accessorial, and fuel-surcharge revenue.
- Cost drivers: Fuel, driver wages and benefits, maintenance, and equipment financing.
- Fixed and variable expenses: Non-driver wages and benefits and fixed-overhead categories.
- Operational results: Operating ratio, margin, and other FreightMath metrics compared with transportation-industry performers.
FreightMarks Financial Mastery
KSMTA also launched FreightMarks Financial Mastery as a 2025 article series to help carriers restructure their general ledgers and obtain more useful profitability and cost information.
The planned topics included:
Structuring GL Accounts
Separating revenue and expense categories so financial reporting shows how the operation actually performs.
Optimizing Cost Allocation
Identifying the activities that generate revenue and expense and using ratio-based or percentage-based allocations when direct assignment is not possible.
Identifying Profitability Drivers
Using detailed GL data to find the operating areas, labor groups, and costs that most affect the carrier's results.
A Common Basis for Better Decisions
By participating in FreightMarks, carriers receive both peer comparisons and specific areas for improvement. The service was designed to turn otherwise inconsistent accounting and operating data into a common set of measures that supports better cost control, operational efficiency, and profitability decisions.