The profile on one page. Including the part most firms leave off.
A privately held logistics operator of 50 to 1,000 people in the Eastern or Central time zone whose freight runs on software it can no longer staff — with a reachable decision maker and a customer-set go-live date its one developer can’t hit. If that is you, every page on this site was written for you. If it isn’t, we would rather tell you now than after a proposal.
We ask these on the first call. You can ask them of yourself now.
Not our customer is not a judgment of your business. It is a judgment of fit: the combination of pressures that makes the continuity relationship worth more to you than any alternative, and worth building for a decade on our side.
| Test | The question |
|---|---|
| 1 · Reachable buyer | Will the owner, president, or GM take the call personally — or is an operations manager carrying the proposal upward? |
| 2 · The mandated date | What is the next date a customer, port, or regulator has put on your systems — and what happens if you miss it? |
| 3 · Load-bearing | If the dispatch board, the WMS, or the entry system stopped Monday morning, what stops with it? |
| 4 · Cannot hire | What happened the last time you tried to hire a developer? |
What the ideal account looks like on paper.
| Attribute | Target | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ~$10M – $250M gross; brokers $5M – $100M net | Big enough to fund $40K–$250K engagements from operating cash; small enough that no procurement office sits between the owner and the decision. |
| Employees | 50 – 1,000; carriers 50 – 500 trucks | Enough operational complexity to need custom systems; a reachable decision-maker still exists. Above 1,000, a division with its own P&L and GM qualifies. |
| Internal developers | 0 – 5, often exactly one | A long-tenured TMS or WMS administrator or developer who wrote the maps. More than ten engineers means you can self-serve. |
| Core systems | Customized or legacy TMS/WMS/dispatch/customs systems, EDI maps, spreadsheets, five or more tools | Re-keying between disconnected tools is the norm; legacy maintenance runs roughly 40% above modern-platform cost — the pain is in your own ledger. |
| Trading-partner churn | Three or more new shipper, carrier, port, or customs integrations a year | The permanent-demand engine. An operator adding trading partners is adding integrations. |
| Geography | Eastern or Central time zone, outside a major tech hiring market | Along the I-4 or I-75 corridors and ports in Tampa, Jacksonville, and Manatee are our sweet-spot, because we can serve them the best. |
| Ownership | Private — founder, family, or ESOP | Trust-based, reference-driven buying with no board gate. We build long-term, trusting relationships with our clients. We might as well start it off right. |
Continuity is bought by whoever personally carries the risk of freight not moving or not getting billed.
Owner · President · CEO · CFO · Division GM
Losing the shipper, failing the audit, or missing the refit window is a personal balance-sheet event. This is a continuity decision, not an IT purchase.
VP/Director of Operations · Onboarding Manager · Controller · IT Manager
Owns the integration backlog and the re-keying. Walks us in — but never carries the proposal alone.
TMS/WMS administrator · EDI analyst · in-house developer
Treated as the expert whose maps and workarounds must outlast them. We are not here to replace their work.
Dispatch · Warehouse · Compliance or Customs Manager
Quantifies what a missed tender, a chargeback, a penalty, or a day of yard delay actually costs.
What we decline — so you don’t spend a cycle finding out.
Each one costs more than its revenue is worth — to us and, in the end, to the client. Publishing the list is how we pre-qualify ourselves for you.
- Procurement-gated buyers — port authorities, public agencies, top-50 3PLs, enterprise shippers. Months of unpaid proposal labor at win rates set by policy. We will target a tenant, division, or supplier instead.
- Companies that can hire — freight-technology platforms, tech-hub headquarters, ten-plus engineers. They fail the central condition.
- Micro operators — brokerages under 20 people, fleets under 50 trucks, owner-operators. They buy packaged software, and they should. We will point you to it.
- Committees of five or more with no single decision owner. Every added stakeholder slows and stalls the cycle of success.
- Sub-$25K builds, rate shoppers, and TMS/WMS selections. Vendor posture, no ladder to climb. Our role is the integration and custody layer around whatever you choose — after the selection, not during it.
- Subcontract work behind an intermediary. Discounted rate, no relationship, no referrals. The revenue is real; everything we build relationships on is absent.
Four tests, forty-five minutes, one honest answer.
If the four tests describe your business, the next step is a risk conversation with the decision-maker. If they don’t, book it anyway and we will tell you who should take your call instead.