Spot and contract freight are two different businesses inside one brokerage. Spot is opportunistic — wider margins when capacity is loose, thin or negative when it tightens — while contract is steadier but usually carries a tighter, committed margin. Mode matters just as much: Reefer and Flatbed tend to pay differently from Dry Van and LTL. This report compares those margin rates side by side so an operations manager can decide where to point agent effort and which freight is actually worth chasing.
What this report answers
What's our margin rate on spot versus contract, and how many loads are in each bucket? Is the spot/contract margin gap widening or closing week to week as the market moves? Which modes carry the margin — and which carry the volume? The Spot vs Contract page sets the two rates against each other and trends them; the Mode & Equipment Economics page breaks margin down by mode and equipment type and surfaces the volume-versus-margin trade-off so you don't mistake a high-volume mode for a high-margin one.
The metrics that matter
Every margin rate here is a SUM/SUM ratio — total margin over total revenue within the slice — so a few small loads can't distort the comparison. Spot Gross Margin % versus Contract Gross Margin % is the headline tension: a brokerage leaning hard into spot in a soft market may be carrying more risk than the average margin suggests. Reefer Margin %, and margin per load by equipment type, tell you whether the specialized freight you work is actually earning its added complexity.
Why the data is trapped
Your TMS — McLeod, Tai, AscendTMS, Aljex, Turvo — tags whether a load is spot or contract and records its mode and equipment, but it won't compute a spot-versus-contract margin rate or a per-mode margin trend for you. That analysis lives in whatever spreadsheet an analyst rebuilds each week, which means it's rarely current when a market shift is exactly when you need it. This template keeps the comparison live off your export.
How to read it
Watch the spot/contract margin gap and how it moves: when spot margin compresses below contract, that's the signal to shift agent focus toward committed freight. Read margin rate against load count by mode — a mode that's high-volume but low-margin is consuming capacity that might earn more elsewhere, while a low-volume, high-margin mode may be worth growing. The sample on this page uses entirely synthetic data — generic labels and made-up dollar figures, no real loads, carriers, or customers.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Spot Gross Margin % | Total margin ÷ total revenue on spot loads (SUM/SUM) — the margin rate on spot-market freight. |
| Contract Gross Margin % | Total margin ÷ total revenue on contract loads (SUM/SUM) — the margin rate on committed freight. |
| Spot Load Count | Count of loads booked as spot freight. |
| Contract Load Count | Count of loads booked under a contract or committed rate. |
| Total Gross Margin $ | Customer revenue minus carrier cost, summed across all loads. |
| Reefer Margin % | Total margin ÷ total revenue on Reefer loads (SUM/SUM) — the margin rate on temperature-controlled freight. |
Used by: Operations managers, brokerage owners
Frequently asked questions
Should a freight brokerage focus on spot or contract freight?
It depends on the market and your risk tolerance. Spot can deliver wider margins when capacity is loose but compresses fast when it tightens; contract trades some margin for predictability. The value of comparing the two margin rates side by side is that it tells you, in your own book, when to lean which way.
Why compare margin by mode and equipment type?
Because Reefer, Flatbed, Dry Van, and LTL carry different buy/sell economics, and a mode that moves a lot of volume isn't necessarily the one earning the most margin. Breaking margin rate and margin per load down by mode and equipment shows where the freight actually pays versus where it just fills the board.
Can I build this on my own load mix data?
Yes. Export your loads with a spot/contract flag, mode, equipment type, revenue, and carrier cost from your TMS and use this as a template — we model it into a Power BI report. The sample uses synthetic data, so there are no real loads in what you see here.
Build this report on your own data
Clone this Freight brokerages template — describe it and we’ll generate sample data so you can try it free, or upload your own export. You get a fully modeled, branded Power BI project that opens in Power BI Desktop.
Use this as a template →