What Shippers Really Value When Choosing Carriers | Episode 63

Shippers aren’t chasing the cheapest LTL rate. They’re choosing confidence.

In episode 63 of Banyan Technology’s Tire Tracks® podcast, Kevin Huntsman, President of Mastio & Company, reveals insights from the 21st Edition of the U.S. LTL Customer Value & Loyalty Study, based on over 1,600 Shipper interviews.

From billing accuracy to communication and reliability, the data proves that Carrier selection is about more than price — it’s about performance you can count on.

Don't miss it!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Kevin Huntsman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-huntsman-73abaa2/

Mastio & Company: https://mastio.com/

Mastio & Company Transportation Studies: https://mastio.com/sector/transportation/

Banyan Technology: https://banyantechnology.com/

Banyan Technology on ‌LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/banyan-technology

Banyan Technology on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/banyantechnology

Banyan Technology on X: https://x.com/BanyanTech

Listen to Tire Tracks on-demand: https://podcast.banyantechnology.com

Listen to Tire Tracks on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tire-tracks-driving-the-logistics-industry/id1651038809

Listen to Tire Tracks on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Aiya6qVXFsiXbUAwMT7S7

Watch this episode on-demand:
https://banyantechnology.com/resource/what-shippers-really-value-when-choosing-carriers-episode-63/

Transcript

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the Tire Tracks Podcast. I'm your host, Matthew Shoemaker. Today, we have one of our all-time favorite guests, Mr. Kevin Huntsman of Mastio & Company. How you doing today, Kevin?

Doing great. Thank you.

Yeah. Did you have a good holiday?

I did. How about you, sir?

Oh, cannot complain. Cannot complain.

Christmas is around the corner, so off we go, right?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. The busy season.

Yup.

But yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you taking the time to jump on. I know this is your busy season. You just released your latest report that you do every single year. And so, I really want to take the time to just jump on here with you and talk about some of your findings. But before we jump into that, could you just tell us a little more about this report you do? What goes into preparing it? What you guys get out of it and everything like that?

Yeah, absolutely. First off, thank you, Matt, for the opportunity to be on today again. I know I've done this. I think it's my third time. It's one of my favorites and appreciate the relationship with Banyan that I have, and with what Mastio has with Banyan. But great question. We just published the 21st edition of the Mastio LTL Studies. Matt, we conduct this study on an annual basis. Yeah, 21 years is crazy.

Every year between, say, late June and early September, we collect the data. 2025, we conducted well over 1,600 telephone interviews. But really, the work starts, Matt, in the spring. We start the process in March, as far as reaching out to the carriers, working with the carriers on the questionnaire. We always look at it every year. We've got a very core group of questions that we keep and we ask, so we can track, I can track the performance of a carrier for the last 21 years –

Wow, that’s impressive.

- over about 25 or so attributes. We do include some new questions each year. I know this year, we had a question around premium LTL, also looking at cross border with Mexico. Matt –

Mm-hmm. Very timely.

Yeah, very. Really gauging where that's at. That early part of the year is that questionnaire development piece. A lot of work, a lot of science behind the scenes with regards to the sample, who we talk to. We're really trying to touch a good cross-section of that SMB market, as well as the enterprise and national accounts. Working on that with my team at Mastio, who does a great job of putting all that together. Really, before the first call is made in late June, we've already been at it for about two months, really preparing and getting everything ready.

Then once the study publishes, we'll provide our clients with the deliverables and then I'm on the road. If I'm not on the road, I'm on teams calls. I've already had two or three today. But Memphis last week. I leave in the morning to go see our good friends at Estes in Richmond –

Oh, very cool.

- and yeah, I think this is seven. Even last week was, yeah, last week was FedEx, and it's about seven weeks in a row on the road. I'll tell you, our carrier partners are wonderful. They really leverage this data, Matthew, to give the shippers a better experience. I think that's really, we've been very fortunate. Of course, the Mastio name is very unique. It's a catchy name, but the carriers talk about it, where they're at in the study. All of that socializing of the name, the study, it helps us and helps our great research team capture this feedback from shippers that are now more familiar than they were the first time we did the study 21 years ago.

Wow, that's really impressive. In a way, you're somewhat like Santa Claus. You start your prep way earlier in the year. You work really hard all year and then you have your delivery here over this month, where you're delivering to good and bad. You're really looking at the naughty and nice list in the carrier industry and delivering that news.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

How is it received with the carriers when you get to talk to them?

That's a great question. Very well. I mean, they know that this is coming directly from the shippers, Matt. They know that the work and the process and they understand that. Doesn't always mean they like it. I think, probably the biggest challenge, Matt, is carriers think their performance should increase. A higher level of performance should be noticed by the shipper community more quickly. It oftentimes takes a while for those shippers to have a repeated level of higher performance over a period of time for them to acknowledge it and recognize it. I think that's probably the biggest pain point with the carriers themselves is we've done all this work. Our metrics say this. We've done that. But it hasn't translated as quickly as they would like in the high scores, or higher scores.

Well, that goes into one of the points that I read in your study just about reliability and being a trustworthy carrier with on that. It almost plays more into it than the price that they're providing is more of that service level and dependability. Can you talk a little bit more about that and go a little more in depth on that?

Absolutely. We're not only measuring the perception of the carriers, Matt, with the shippers, we're also capturing how important each one of those attributes are to them when selecting between carriers. Actually, competitive pricing is not number one. It's number six. The top ones are picked up when promised, delivered when promised. Billing accuracy is up there at the top. Honest and trustworthiness of carrier and then pricing comes in number six. Now, it's not that it's not important, but at some point, if you've got – if the price is really, really good, but the service is really, really bad, it's not necessarily a carrier you want to go with. We look at, like I said, about 25 attributes where we're measuring that importance.

Most people would tell you, you just ask them, “Oh, yeah. Price is number one.” Well, it's right up there towards the top, but it's those fundamentals that really matter more so than price. Even in a market today that struggles, that's got a lot of capacity and is challenged, price is still not number one. It's very important, but not number one.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about it too, with shippers, they have their own customer base to worry about. If their reliability is an issue from the carrier, it's impacting their customer relationships. It's so much more expensive to find new customers, I would imagine, than finding having a competitive price, looking at the price versus the customer relationship aspect and the service levels.

Absolutely. When you look at price, you've always got to marry that up with the level of service that's provided. Mastio does a lot of analysis around what we call just value mapping. As a carrier proceed to be a higher cost, but a lower benefit. Really, carriers can be all over that map. I mean, what was interesting for us in 2025, the only carrier in the premium quadrants of the value map was Old Dominion.

You've got a lot of carriers that were similar from a performance perspective, but ODFL is a higher price carrier, but they're an extremely high performing carrier as well. When you're looking at that and you're a shipper, you're trying to – you’re really trying to understand what value do I get, Matt, for the dollar that I spent. In some instances, there's some carriers, an example would be like Daylight Transport, or Averitt Express that provide incredibly high levels of service at a lower perceived price. But it's not necessarily always true, because you heard me use the word proceed. It goes back to that dollar that I spend. What value do I feel like I get as a shipper with these individual carriers?

I made a comment a moment ago, I wanted to hit on real quick, is one of the top five attributes and importance is billing accuracy. You got, doesn't everybody get the bill right in the LTL industry? No, they do not. I mean, we talk with our carrier partners when they're struggling with billing accuracy, or if that's weighing accuracy that marries up into that, Matt. It creates friction. Friction in a relationship is not a good thing.

Absolutely.

Really, we've had carriers tell us a lot, like I said, we want to pay you, or shippers, excuse me. We want to pay the carrier, but we want to pay on an invoice that's correct. There's a lot of work behind the scenes with carriers, with systems that are trying to create less friction in that relationship.

Mm-hmm. Oh, that totally makes sense. People wanting to be billed what they said they were going to be.

Yeah. Basically, it's a quote to invoice type logic and it's important.

And looking at it.

As simple as it sounds, it’s critically important.

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's so much time that goes into comparing the two between quotes and what's actually invoiced. Then also, on top of that, the process behind it to then remedy that. It's absolutely critical as from what we see on our side, too.

Oh, absolutely.

Another interesting thing that as I was digging through the pages late at night on this and really digging into it was the customer experience is the one thing that you talked about. Then the communication as a major multiplier of customer loyalty. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how communication plays into the whole process?

Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of thoughts there. You've got to communicate in an honest and forthright manner. That's critical, that real transparency. Then the attribute we measure also is proactive communications. Proactive communications is an interesting attribute, because you could ask five people what proactive means and get six different answers. I asked one of our carrier partners here very recently, actually. I asked this gentleman. I'm like, as a carrier, what does proactive communications means to you? His response was interesting, Matt. He's like, “Listen.” He goes, “For us, proactive communications as the carrier is, if we know something, we need to let the shipper know. If they think we're coming today to pick up a pallet at 4.00, and we know there's no way we're going to be able to make it, at 11 a.m. we know that, we need to let them know then.” I think that's a critical component.

Really, communication across the board, all of us are – it's the immediacy effect. Now, we expect somebody to respond to us quickly when it's an email. It used to be, you could leave a voicemail and somebody called you back in the day. That was fine. Now, we've got this, oh, I got to know now. I got to know now. I think that's the key thing with carriers is leveraging what they know and moving that into the hands of the shipper, so that shipper can make any accommodations they need to.

The real cheesy example, Matthew, was a carrier, a shipper, I was doing an interview a couple of years ago on a side project. I'm like, what frustrates you as a shipper when it comes to communication? It was very similar to what the gentleman at the carrier told me. He goes like, “Listen, if I'm standing on the dock waiting for you because I think you're coming and I'm missing my son, or daughter's soccer game, shame on you. You know, let me know. If you can't get it today, I understand we can do it tomorrow. But don't make me wait if you know something.” Really, for us, what we see in the data is not just proactive, but transparency and communication, Matthew.

Yeah. That's really interesting. I think marrying that even with one of the things you said when you were recently at our client forum up here in Cleveland, I loved how you talked a lot about the relationship aspect of when people choose carriers and if a rep leaves a carrier and goes to another one, I'd imagine that communication piece is one of those drivers too, where they've received great communication, great service, and that drives that relationship side when they go and choose which carriers they're looking at.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

One of the attributes we measure is knowledgeable and helpful sales reps. It's from a customer needs, it's what we call a latent differentiator, which means it has a significant impact on the relationship and higher levels of performance really do dictate that relationship, and oftentimes, you see that even, Matthew, when a rep leaves and goes to another carrier, that customer will follow them, and because they created that relationship.

There's a term I like to use, is that that rep is the advocate for that shipper internally. There's to me, two real key advocates for the for the shipper at the carrier level. That's the sales rep and the driver. The driver oftentimes gets forgotten about. But I subscribe to the theory that for most customers, that driver is that company, that carrier, whether it's Daylight or Averitt, or Dayton, or Southeastern, that's the drivers who they see every day, Matthew. That’s who they develop that relationship with. Then, once you've got that type of relationship with the driver and the account executive, you've really got two great advocates for you. That allows that relationship to become even deeper, and the account exec becomes – there's a great book called The Trusted Advisor.

I love that.

That's really what that prep becomes as a trusted advisor.

You can come to them with any problem, any challenge, and they're going to figure out how to work with you together to get it to work.

Absolutely.

I love what you said about the driver. I'm thinking back 20 years, I'm shocked that I can say that now, but when I used to load trucks in college and work on a shipping dock and I remember, I still remember some of those drivers, the ones I like, the ones I didn't, which carriers I liked, and it was almost a direct reflection of usually two things. It was the driver, and then, also, the quality of the trailer I was loading. As a forklift wheel would go through a floor, or something gets stuck. Yeah, it always depended on those two things for me.

To your point on both of those, first on the driver, I mean, that driver sets the tone for that relationship. If the driver's grouchy and comes in unhappy, that's going to be the rest of that experience for that day with the driver. I do want to hit on something. You brought it up as truck appearance. When we measure the importance of truck appearance, Matthew, it's last. It's dead last and important. But it's not that it's not important. It's important if it becomes an issue. But what we've done is a little additional research and what we've found is that when you think about the term, or the attribute, truck appearance you're thinking about the outside, it's to your point. It's the inside of the trailer. Are there broken boards? Has it been swept out?

When that trailer backs up and opens up, if you see a trailer that's damaged, a trailer that's dirty, that's how you're – you think, hey, that's how they're treating my freight. If they can't treat something they own well, well, they're sure as heck not treating my freight well. Having a trailer that's swept out, that has boards that are in great shape. One of the carriers, and I think this is a great story is XPO. XPO builds their own trailers. They don't buy trailers from anybody else.

Oh, wow. I didn’t know that.

Yeah, they build their own trailers in Arkansas. It's a big deal to them to have high-quality trailers, again, swept out, no broken boards. That makes a great first impression if it's in good shape with the shipper.

Yeah. That's incredible. I actually hadn't thought about that on the study level that that was an indicator that you guys could actually study down to and look at. I still remember even some of them that had the clear ceiling, so they were well lit inside and you just felt like you were just – it's like daylight going into those ones. It's like, all right. I just love this, all the fresh daylight coming into this and I can actually see where I'm going. I'm not, you know.

Yup. Yup. Oh, yeah.

That's great. That's great. Well, another thing, just some of the things we've touched on relate to the quickness to receive information and billing accuracy, different things. But how does technology play into it and how does technology performance play into this and the immediacy of information?

That's a great question. I mean, it's a very tech-driven industry in many fronts, but it's also still very relationship related. How can you as a carrier marry those two together? I think some of the carriers like an Estes Express has invested very heavily in technology and created a real transparency of information for the shipper, and that's a critical piece. This goes back. I always say, we've been Amazoned. I mean, we know, when it shows up at your front door, because the ring doorbell goes off and then you've got a package. If you take it back, here we take it back to Staples or whatever it is where I live. Before you get back to the truck, you've got a little ping on Apple Pay that the refund’s already went through.

The other example is Domino's Pizza, Matthew. You can track your pizza from oven to your front door, basically. What we've created is an expectation in the logistics industry of that level of insight. I think so much of it is on the website, is the ability to get where I need to go very quickly. That's important. I don't need to jump through a lot of steps. I think it's that first pass is okay, can I do this online because it's easier? Then if not, can I talk to a customer service rep that is knowledgeable? I know SIA moved all their customer service reps back to the terminal, which I thought was a great idea, because those boots on the ground right there, Matthew, that can really find out the answers to the questions quite quickly.

I mean, I had somebody ask me yesterday, “All this technology, Kevin, all these things, do you think there's still going to be a need for that sales rep?” I'm like, “Absolutely.” Because back to my advocacy and that trusted advisor piece. I think that's been one of the successful reasons for ODFL over time, Matthew, is early on their ability to integrate that technology, but still maintain that personal relationship. You call a company that you're doing business with and the call goes overseas for customer service, or somewhere else and it's hard to understand, that's frustrating.

It all goes back to me. One of the things we measure is ease of doing business with a carrier. All those factors work up into that ease of doing business with the carrier. Definitely, the innovative technology married with a still person-to-person relationship, I think, is where long-term success. The term AI comes in, I don't know, every conversation, I'm sure for you guys who've given the industry you're in, I'd love to take, and we could use AI to do it, but dump all the analysts calls from the LTL 3rd Q into chat and tell me how many times somebody said AI. Can it make us better? Absolutely. I think it can definitely make us better, but not losing that human component that these shippers still care about.

I mean, we ask a question around looking at, do you prefer APIs? What do you prefer? At the end of the day, believe it or not, still, paper rules the day, Matt. You'd like to think in a lot of pundits in the industry will tell you, “Oh, in the next few years, there won't be any paper.” Wrong. Wrong. Because the adoption rate away from paper BOLs is rather slow. I wouldn't say, it's not accelerating to some degree, but not at the pace many people would like you to believe. I wish it would. I think it's more efficient. But it just goes back to saying that, listen, all this technology is great, but there's some folks that still want the paper, still want the telephone, still want to do things the old school away.

Yeah. I'm never surprised when we talk to one of our account executives here at Banyan and they talk to a large organization. I remember one in particular, it was a 7-billion-dollar company. You're just like, man, their supply chain has to be a well-oiled machine. When we're talking through their processes, how are you managing it today? They said, some spreadsheets that some MBA types created for us, phone calls and emails. That was it. There was no overarching tech stack. It was just all manual for a 7-billion-dollar company that has products on shelf and every single store in the country.

Isn't that just crazy that – I mean, and the efficiency is on both sides, too. I know there's a there's a cost involved and there's a – I think it's not just cost. I think it's fear that if I were to change all this and this is how I know to do it now, am I going to have inventory issues, inventory challenges? Companies that – I think there's a fear factor involved with it as well. Again, the cost is a major component to that. I argue, or I would argue that you would make – you’d save money relatively quickly, Matt, if you switched away from some of that spreadsheet stuff. But yeah, people are slow to adopt certain types of technology for sure.

Absolutely. Just on that same vein, what are some of the technology jumps that carriers are trying to make? Or is there any slowness on their side based on the feedback you're receiving, or when they're looking at and talking to you about technology in their own business, are carriers quick to adapt that, or are they slow to adapt that? How are you seeing that in the conversations as well?

Yeah. I think they're getting better. Up until this slower time, I think there was pretty heavy investment in technology, and that comes and goes with revenue and OR, basically. I think the carriers are doing a pretty good job, because they do see what's expected in – in this industry, it's very competitive, as we both know, that if I'm dealing with a carrier and they've got a tech stack that's extremely valuable and insightful and useful, it's almost monkey see monkey do. They try to replicate that.

I've learned it the other day and I thought, this was outstanding that one of the carriers has got to set up now with their handhelds, where they can actually take a payment, the ship, or the driver. Let's say, you get a home delivery to your house of vanity from Home Depot and the deal is that they drop at your driveway and that's it. It stays in the driveway. However, you could get it moved into your garage, but there's a $75 charge. It would be assessorial that the shipper said, “No, we're not paying that.” But if that person wants to do that, that driver today can take a credit card on their handheld and then wheel that on what's already on the fork truck, and it takes one or two minutes and you're getting $75 for it. I felt that's brilliant, to create that incremental revenue, because they've got a handheld where they can take a credit card.

A really great example.

That's a carrier that's one of the one of the national carriers that's implementing that type of technology. I think if one carrier does it, you'll start to see the other carriers try to implement some more technology as well.

Yeah. The technology I use in that case when somebody delivers something large in my doorstep is just to put a 50 in my palm and shake their hand.

That helps, too. That helps, too.

Then ask the favor, “Hey, would you mind running that up the stairs really quick for me?”

Right. Right. Yeah. But it is interesting, though. A lot of those things are just set their driveway drop. I mean, that's where you run into your assessorials and drop gates and things with the carriers. I like your method even better. I'm sure the driver would, too.

Yeah. Carriers, not so much.

Not so much.

They're missing out on their revenue, but you know.

They want that revenue.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I know we're getting close to the end of our time here, but from all the years past and your conversations so far, what are some of the surprises from this year? Is there any surprises for you, surprises for the carrier, surprises from shippers you're talking to? What's been the big aha moments that people are having?

That's a good question. I think one of the biggest aha moments and it gets talked about a lot, especially in the investor community with the public LTL carriers, I know it transcends the public to all the regionals is pricing discipline, Matthew, that the carriers, if we go back to 08, 09, it was bad. It was almost a race to the bottom. I'm glad to see that they've learned. Because you talk about a couple decades, I'm three decades in on this. It's been extremely impressive that carriers have held the line on pricing, and with GRIs that have come out and held and stuck.

Some of the sentiment we're seeing a little bit here lately is the shippers aren't happy about that, because they see, oh, the headlines, there's 25%, 30% capacity, Matthew, in the market to be able to get a much more aggressive pricing structure from these carriers, and it's not happen. They're really holding the line on price. They continue to invest, even though I think maybe a little bit less as I mentioned a moment ago around the concept of a better technology, but they're investing where they can and in preparing themselves for when the economy turns around. Everything goes down, comes up, and everything goes up, comes down. We're on the bottom part of that trough right now and I think we're close to moving back up. I think that has been really the key takeaway for us and the data we've seen is rate stability not being where the shippers thought it would be, because they're actually going up a little bit.

Then the other thought would be, is that relationship. I go back to it all the time. I mean, what FedEx freight announced here, they've hired a lot, but they said, they were going to hire 400 sales reps. I mean, that's when you know you've got a gap there and they're addressing that, but that goes to show you how important that relationship is when the biggest carrier is saying, “Hey, we recognize this. We've got a gap. We've got to be better,” and that relationship matters. It really truly does.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Is there anything else coming into 2026, any forecasts, or any thoughts? I'm sure you're already starting to wrap your head around the next study and then what you think is going to change in the horizon. Is there anything else that you're seeing, or thinking?

That's a good question. We're always trying to think about, we'll really start developing that questionnaire and anything new. We'll continue to figure ways to better understand the cross-border market with Mexico, where that's at. I know there's sizable investment by many carriers in the Laredo area. We'll continue to look at that, understand the pricing discipline. One of the questions that comes up a little bit, we don't see it much, but is a bit of migration from LTL to truckload. Trying to understand that that's really – I don't want to say it's not happening. I think it's in a low single digit number. But just trying to understand some trends around that, trends around the perception of pricing as we roll into 26.

The last thing would be, we really have a real great view into all aspects and facets of the economy with the different types of companies we speak with. Just asking those shippers outside of LTL, where do you see your business going in 2026? Do you see growth? Do you see stagnation? Trying to gleam a few more economic indicators out of these folks when we're talking to them. In our team, the Mastio team that does the research does an amazing job. It's not easy to capture this information and be persistent and really, what I say, peel the onion, but tell you what, man, I get to sit here and talk to great guys like you, because of the great team that we have at Mastio, that makes the telephone calls, and Sharona that works with the data and Estol and Kim and Angie and the whole entire team gets us the opportunity to do things like this and really provide high-value data that carriers use to make decisions, Matthew.

I mean, it's a big responsibility. We acknowledge it, we understand it, and we think about it every minute of the day to do the best we can do to guide these carriers and how they can become better and offer a more holistic view of a higher level of service across the LTL industry. Not to plug, but we do the same thing with Canadian LTL. We do a global air and ocean freight. We're going to add a study in 2026 around 3PLs. There's been a lot of interest in that.

Excited to read that one.

Yeah. When we do that, we'll have to do this again.

Absolutely.

No, we’re excited. I can't believe that Christmas is three weeks from Thursday, but we're excited for 2026. Excited. Very excited for Banyan and talking with Brian and all that you guys are doing and how you're partnering and making the industry a better place as well. We like to be in the same breath as a company as Banyan and appreciate all the opportunities you provided us.

We really do appreciate you as well, and your entire team. We know there's so much that goes into it in your time. I know you're traveling around the country, especially after this releases, and really pounding the ground. We really do appreciate that. Yeah, it was going to offer you an opportunity for a shameless plug and I appreciate you going into it. You saved me the question.

Hey, I've known you for a while, so you knew it was coming.

I did. I did. No, we always want to give your moment to shine there. We really appreciate that. Well, yeah. Thank you so much again. For everybody watching, thank you again for tuning in to this episode of the Tire Tracks Podcast. If you haven't already, please do head over to YouTube and go ahead and throw a like and a subscribe on there. Leave us a positive review if you can on any of your podcast sites. Always goes a long way to help us out with this podcast and continue to grow it, to find amazing people like Kevin and invite them on here. Kevin, I know, I've just said where they can find us. Where can they find you guys?

Yeah. I'm on LinkedIn. We've got the mastio.com website as well. I'm probably not as adept at the socials. It's all this gray hair and stuff you see here. I’m behind. I need to find somebody to help me out with that. But no, LinkedIn and mastio.com. If that doesn't work, just give me a call.

Sounds good. Well, thanks again, Kevin. Happy holidays.

You too, sir. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Thanks, everyone.

Yeah.