How Stanley Black & Decker Saved $100K+ With Reliable Contracts

Stanley Black & Decker had a handful of outbound California lanes that no contract carrier would stick with. Loadsmart Reliable Contracts gave those lanes guaranteed capacity and a rate that moved with the market, saving the team more than $100,000 in 2022.

By the Numbers

At a Glance

Matt Jolles, Manager of North American Truckload at Stanley Black & Decker, runs truckload freight with a lean team. On their hardest outbound lanes, they needed one thing a standard contract couldn’t give them: carriers who would keep showing up.

Challenge: Contract Rates Kept Falling Apart on Inconsistent Lanes

Some of Stanley Black & Decker’s outbound California lanes didn’t move steady volume. Carriers would agree to a rate, then walk away when the volume didn’t hold up. The team would rebid, lock a new rate and start the cycle again.

It’s very tough to get consistency from a contract rate perspective.

“It’s very tough to get consistency from a contract rate perspective,” Jolles said. “We’ll lock in a rate and as long as they’re seeing freight, we might get 3 months at the agreed upon price. But the arrangement will typically fall apart.”

For a lean team, every arrangement that fell apart meant more time spent finding coverage and booking loads instead of managing the network.

Solution: Reliable Contracts for the Toughest Lanes

Stanley Black & Decker moved its most troublesome outbound California lanes onto Loadsmart Reliable Contracts. Instead of a fixed rate that carriers abandon, the program pairs a dynamic rate with a 100% PTA guarantee: Loadsmart accepts every load tendered on those lanes.

The structure keeps both sides aligned. Loadsmart’s margins are tied to performance, and Stanley Black & Decker sees how rates are built.

We haven’t had any noise since we started the program.

“What Loadsmart’s Reliable Contracts allows me to do is take our known, tough to contract lanes and have guaranteed capacity,” Jolles said. “We haven’t had any noise since we started the program... and we’re able to achieve a reduction to about 1-min to book a load.”

Strategy: Guarantee Capacity, Let the Rate Move and Keep It Transparent

Start with the lanes that break. The team didn’t move its whole network. It put Reliable Contracts on the lanes it already knew were hard to keep under contract, where failed tenders cost the most time.

Guarantee acceptance on every load. The 100% PTA guarantee means every load on those lanes is accepted, so the team no longer has to rebuild coverage each time a contract carrier walks away.

Use a dynamic rate instead of a locked one. A fixed rate set in a tight market keeps costing more after the market softens. A dynamic rate follows the market, so savings show up without a new bid. “We can ride the market down, whereas if we had a contracted rate, we’re not actively capturing the benefit of riding that wave down,” Jolles said.

Tie margins to performance and share the math. Incentivized margins and rate transparency give Loadsmart a reason to buy capacity well and give Stanley Black & Decker a clear view of what it pays and why. “Given the arrangement, there’s plenty of motivation for Loadsmart to buy well, because they can get better margins for the performance,” Jolles said.

Result: $100K+ Saved Without Rebidding

As the truckload market softened through 2022, the dynamic rate followed it down. Stanley Black & Decker saved more than $100,000 compared with the contract rate it had locked six months earlier, without running a new bid. Loadsmart held 100% PTA throughout the program, and booking a load dropped to about one minute.

With those lanes stable, Stanley Black & Decker expanded the program to five new locations and tripled its load volume under Reliable Contracts. For Jolles, the value comes down to a simple promise kept.

Loadsmart is doing what we signed up for, which is — accept every load and pick it up on time.