class 8 trucks
forecasting
In this comparison, I’ll take a look at when to choose Standard versus Premium. First and foremost, the expensive mistake isn’t picking the “wrong” level. It’s not having a system in place that is keeping pace with the market moves and identifying the pivot points before they happen. That’s where we can help regardless of the level you choose as both levels provide you direct access to one of the most sophisticated forecasting methodologies in the market and the expertise that analyzes them.
The economy generates freight, and freight drives the demand for carriers and equipment. That’s not theory, it’s what we found when we developed Freight•cast™ over forty years ago and it’s the basis for why we’ve continued to refine it since then. Regardless of whether you’re analyzing cycles before the pandemic or after, the economy is always the starting point of where the largest swaths of freight are generated which then trickles through to carriers and equipment. These services were meticulously designed to give you the right level of visibility to an unbiased, third-party perspective based on your organizational needs.
Let’s take a look at the two levels now.
Standard: Ideal for teams who need an expert’s “what” and “why” to guide their decisions
- 5 licenses/users
- Access to the monthly report
- Access to the monthly client-only webinar, where we go deeper into the forecasts and outlooks
- Right fit if your team isn’t currently benchmarking, modeling, or meeting regularly to talk through market conditions
Premium: Built for teams that recognize data and communication as a competitive advantage
- Graphs package. About 100 prepopulated slides, so your team isn’t rebuilding charts from scratch every time your stakeholders ask for a market update.
- BEST PRACTICE - Our best clients create a process to distribute these market views on a regular cadence, sometimes even with multiple teams on varying cadences. i.e. your LT wants a Quarterly Business Review to stay ahead of budget planning and your Sales Team needs to know their market for their customer facing interactions.
- Weekly Transportation Update, published Friday afternoons. The newsworthy events from that week that could move next month’s forecast, so you’re not clicking through twenty headlines to find the three that matter.
- BEST PRACTICE - Send this to your internal teams who need a recap of the weekly activity that they need to know between our forecasting publication cycles helping expand their knowledgebase and expertise.
- Database, in Excel or by API. Historical and forecasted data your team can turn into trendlines, pricing models, and benchmarks.
- BEST PRACTICE - Map your internal data to our historical data to identify correlations and leading indicators that you can then start to pay more attention to in the market.
- Annual Market Update Call. A private webinar built around the questions your team submits ahead of time, presented by our experts.
- BEST PRACTICE - Schedule these touchpoints with our experts around your important cycles in your annual planning. A shipper might plan these one month out from RFP season to ensure they have a plan to support rate defensibility.
Both beat guessing
Both levels serve their purpose.
The base of the service is always our unbiased forecast, our data-driven perspective on where the market’s headed, and access to the expertise that is analyzing the data. That’s why the report, webinar, and dedicated account management are included at both levels. Those perspectives are built on collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing millions of data points, so your team doesn’t have to build that process yourself.
The one thing I can tell you for certain is that the economy generates freight, and freight drives the demand for carriers and equipment. It’s all connected, and we’ve built our system to capture the metrics that move the market. Not paying attention to that is an expensive, avoidable mistake, and it’s one we can help you avoid.
Complete our Market Intelligence Audit to get a personal recommendation, or schedule 20 minutes with me and I can help you hone it down to the right product and the right level.
Derek Young
