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Freight and logisticsIndustry solution

Conversion tracking for freight, measured in shipping accounts

Freight is a two-sided business and almost every account measures it as one. Shippers are the customers; carriers are the supply. They need different campaigns, different conversion actions and different values, and combining them means bidding optimizes toward whichever side generates more form fills — usually carriers, who cost you money rather than making it. The customer value is also not the first shipment but the ongoing lane volume, which lives in the TMS and is invisible to any browser.

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By Ariful IslamFreight and logistics, in short ↓

Getting and tracking leads for freight and logistics companies

Where a freight company's leads come from, and how to keep carriers out of the shipper count

A freight broker, trucking company or warehouse operator gets shipper quote requests, carrier sign-ups and driver applications through the same website, often from the same ads. Count a lead when a shipper with real freight asks for a rate on a lane or a warehousing quote, and record its source on the HubSpot or Salesforce account so the loads it tenders can be traced back.

Here is how it usually looks: the ads report plenty of quote requests, and the sales team says most were a carrier wanting loads, a CDL driver asking about pay, or someone pricing a single pallet who never picked up the callback. Shippers, carriers and drivers all search 'trucking company' or 'freight broker', land on the same pages and fill in whichever form is nearest. Driver applications that finish on Tenstreet's form are a separate blind spot: the recruiting ad gets no credit at all.

Counted together, the cheap side wins. Carrier setups and spot quotes arrive in volume, Smart Bidding learns to find more of them, and the shippers with weekly lanes, whose freight is the business, become a rounding error in the report. A ten-minute check: pull last month's quote-form submissions, look each one up in the CRM, and label it shipper with recurring freight, one-off spot quote, carrier or driver. Then put that split next to what Google Ads counted.

Fixed looks like separate conversion actions for shipper quotes, carrier setup and driver applications, each with its own campaigns and budget; the click ID saved on the shipper account; and the first tendered load, then lane revenue from the TMS, sent back as value. At that point you can see which keywords bring shippers who keep shipping. The free audit starts by splitting those three funnels in your own data.

Where the leads come from

Google Search adsShippers searching by mode and lane: LTL, flatbed, drayage, refrigeratedKeep shipper, carrier and driver keywords in separate campaigns, each with its own conversion action.
Business ProfileLocal shippers, drivers and carriers looking up the yard or warehouseDriver and carrier calls dominate; tag them so they don't count as freight leads. A virtual office isn't eligible, which catches brokers in shared suites.
LinkedInLogistics and procurement managers at manufacturers and distributorsMeasure on discovery calls and first loads in the CRM; volume is too thin for automated bidding.
MetaDriver recruiting far more than freight salesDriver job ads fall under Meta's employment special ad category; run them apart from shipper campaigns and judge them on hires.
Load boardsWhere carriers find your freight, not where shippers find youDAT and Truckstop traffic is supply; keep it out of marketing reports altogether.
Quote aggregators and freight marketplacesShared shipper requests sent to several providers at onceTrack as their own source and compare tendered loads per request, not quote volume.

Which calls count

Count it when
Count the call when a shipper describes freight you can move: origin, destination, mode and a ready date, or a lane that repeats.
Minimum duration
A real rate request takes time to describe, so start around two minutes and check recordings. Carrier and driver calls can run just as long, which is why the caller type matters more than the timer.
After hours
Shippers arrange freight in business hours; a call at night is usually a driver or a missed pickup on a load you already have. Keep night ads off and send those calls to dispatch.

Where each lead should land

Shipper quote form from a Search ad
CRM account and deal with the click ID and lane details, so the first tendered load can be sent back to Google Ads.
Carrier setup or load-board inquiry
Carrier onboarding, never the sales CRM, so it can't count as a freight lead.
Driver application through Tenstreet or DriverReach
The driver recruiting system, with the campaign recorded so recruiting ads are judged on hires.
Shipper call from the Business Profile or a referral
CRM account with the source set on the first call, before the rep turns it into a deal.

Freight and logistics · what breaks

What freight and logistics companies usually run into

  1. 01

    Shipper and carrier leads in one conversion action

    Two different funnels, two different economics, one number that describes neither.

  2. 02

    Quote requests optimized as conversions

    Freight quoting is high volume and mostly price discovery.

  3. 03

    First shipment valued as the account

    The revenue is recurring lane volume over years.

Freight and logistics · the fix

What changes — Freight and logistics

  • First shipment as the shipper money event

    From the TMS, valued at expected annual lane revenue.

  • Carrier onboarding as a separate event

    Real and valuable, and never in the same conversion action as a shipper.

  • Account value from your own history

    Average annual revenue per account times average tenure.

Freight and logistics · architecture

The conversion map for freight and logistics companies

Five events across two sides of a marketplace.

  1. 1

    Quote request

    High volume, mostly price discovery.

  2. 2

    Qualified shipper lead

    Confirmed lanes, volume and creditworthiness.

  3. 3

    First shipment booked

    The shipper money event, valued at expected annual revenue.

  4. 4

    Carrier application

    The supply side. Its own conversion action, always.

  5. 5

    Carrier onboarded and hauling

    The supply-side money event.

Freight and logistics · diagnose

Where freight and logistics companies tracking usually breaks

  1. 01

    One conversion action for both sides

    The most damaging configuration here, and the most common.

  2. 02

    Credit approval sitting between lead and shipment

    A qualified shipper who fails credit is not revenue.

  3. 03

    CRM and TMS as separate systems

    The identifier has to reach the TMS or shipments cannot be attributed.

  4. 04

    Long onboarding cycles

    Enterprise shippers can take months from first contact to first load.

Freight and logistics · prove

How the work is proven — Freight and logistics

Source of truth

The TMS — first shipments by date and ongoing lane revenue by account, for the same window

  • First shipments reconciled per account against what each platform reports, shipper side only.
  • Carrier conversions reconciled separately, on their own terms.
  • Identifier coverage measured independently on each funnel.
  • Account value shown as the calculation, from your own revenue history.

Freight and logistics · free audit

What we check in the free audit

  • One conversion action for both sides
  • Credit approval sitting between lead and shipment
  • CRM and TMS as separate systems
  • Long onboarding cycles

Checked against

The TMS — first shipments by date and ongoing lane revenue by account, for the same window

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Freight and logistics · when not to buy

What lands in your monthly report — Freight and logistics

One page a month, in language you can put in front of a commercial director.

  • New shipping accounts and modeled annual value by campaign, over a closed quarter.
  • Carrier onboardings reported separately, never summed with shipper conversions.
  • Cost per new shipping account next to cost per quote request.
  • Quote-to-shipment rate by campaign, which identifies price-discovery traffic.

Freight and logistics · what we deliver

The flow we build — Freight and logistics

  • Click identifier captured and persisted on both funnels separately

    Shipper and carrier journeys usually live on different pages.

  • Carried into the CRM and the TMS

    Onto the account record, through any lead conversion.

  • First shipment fires the shipper conversion

    With the modeled account value.

  • Dormant accounts reported

    An account that shipped once and stopped is not the value you claimed.

Written guarantee

95%+ tracking accuracy

Measured against The TMS — first shipments by date and ongoing lane revenue by account, for the same window. Miss it and we keep working at no cost.

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FAQ

Freight and logistics questions, answered

Because one is revenue and the other is cost of supply. In a shared conversion action the side generating more form fills dominates bidding, and that is almost always carriers — so you end up spending your customer acquisition budget recruiting trucks.

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