From Assumed Rates to Measured Reality

From Assumed Rates to Measured Reality: Why HaulIQ Exists

Most aggregate, cement, asphalt, and construction building materials companies don’t lose money on freight because they’re careless.

They lose money because their haul rates are defensible — but wrong.

They make sense at a glance.

They’ve “worked” for years.

They don’t trigger alarms.

And that’s exactly the problem.

Freight mistakes in this industry rarely announce themselves. They don’t show up as obvious failures. They show up quietly — later — after the bid is lost, the margin tightens, or the explanation becomes uncomfortable.

This is the gap HaulIQ was built to close.

The Most Expensive Freight Mistakes Don’t Look Like Mistakes

In aggregate construction and building materials, freight is one of the largest controllable cost components — and one of the least interrogated.

When freight assumptions are wrong, the symptoms don’t show up immediately. They show up downstream as:

• Margins that compress without a clear cause
• Bids that “should have worked” but didn’t
• Internal transfer price creep
• Hauler disputes that feel emotional instead of solvable

In most organizations, these moments are treated as isolated issues. In reality, they’re signals of the same underlying problem:

Rates were built on assumptions that no longer reflect how the operation actually runs.

How Most Haul Rates Are Still Built

Despite how complex operations have become, most haul pricing still relies on some combination of:

• Average miles
• Historical cycle times
• Flat hourly or per-mile logic
• Rules of thumb passed down over time

Those methods weren’t careless. At one point, they were practical.

But the operating environment has changed.

Fuel volatility is constant.

Congestion is structural.

Driver availability is constrained.

Access, permitting, and routing friction are real.

Competition is tighter and more transparent.

What hasn’t evolved at the same pace is how freight is measured, tested, and defended.

The Industry Relies Too Heavily on Confidence

This industry is built on experience — and experience builds confidence.

Confidence is not the enemy.

Unexamined confidence is.

When experience isn’t paired with structure, it turns into assumption.

Assumption becomes habit.

Habit becomes exposure.

Two hauls that look identical on paper are almost never equal in the field:

• Load time varies by hour, crew, and site condition
• Queue depth changes productivity dramatically
• Site access adds friction that never shows up in spreadsheets
• Return routing can quietly erode cycle time
• Discharge constraints are often underestimated

Most pricing models flatten these differences away — not because they’re unimportant, but because they’re hard to see.

That’s where margin quietly disappears.

Why We Built HaulIQ

We didn’t build HaulIQ to replace experience.

We built it to discipline it.

Every operator is forced to answer the same question, over and over — often without the right tools:

“What should this haul actually cost, given how it really operates?”

Not what it cost last year.

Not what feels competitive.

Not what avoids a tough conversation.

What the operation truly supports — today.

That distinction matters more now than it ever has.

Built Around Reality, Not Averages

HaulIQ treats freight as an operational system, not a static rate.

It starts with a few principles that sound simple — but are rarely enforced consistently:

• Time matters more than mileage
• Productivity matters more than assumptions
• Location context matters more than spreadsheets

By integrating with ACM Locator, HaulIQ grounds freight decisions in reality:

• Real source locations, not abstractions
• Real routing logic, not straight-line distance
• Real market proximity, not gut feel
• Real constraints producers deal with every day

This isn’t generic logistics software.

It’s purpose-built for how construction materials actually move.

Why the Industry Needs This Now

The old methods worked when:

• Competition was local
• Costs were predictable
• Capacity was forgiving

Those conditions no longer exist.

Today, operators are expected to:

• Defend rates internally with confidence
• Justify bids externally under scrutiny
• Respond to hauler pressure with facts, not emotion
• Compete against imports and alternative sourcing
• Explain outcomes after the fact — often to people who weren’t in the room

“Because that’s what we’ve always paid” isn’t a strategy anymore.

The companies that win going forward won’t be the ones with cheaper hauling.

They’ll be the ones with explainable, defensible, repeatable hauling logic.

A Real Internal Transfer, Broken Down

Most hauling conversations don’t start with conflict.

They start with assumptions that quietly harden into “facts.”

This is a real internal transfer — the kind we see constantly across the industry.

The Scenario

• Haul type: Internal plant transfer
• Source: Quarry
• Destination: Stockpile
• Distance: 29.1 miles one way
• Pricing method: Per ton
• Why it matters:
• High volume
• Thin margins
• Regular hauler pushback

On the surface, this haul looks straightforward.

And that’s where most pricing methods stop.

The Original (Assumed) Model

Historically, the haul was framed like this:

• Cycle time: 135 minutes
• Payload: 22 tons per load
• Goal Hourly Rate Equivalent (HRE): $120/hour

That implies:

• Cost per ton: $12.27

On its face, this pricing wasn’t reckless or ill-considered.

It’s defensible.

It’s familiar.

It’s also outdated.

What Was Actually Happening in the Field

When we shifted from assumptions to measured performance, a different picture emerged:

• Actual cycle time: 126 minutes
• Actual payload: 23 tons per load

At that level of performance, the same operation was effectively generating an implied HRE of $134.39/hour, even though it was being paid as if it were running slower and lighter.

Translated back into per-ton terms, that performance supports:

• A $1.31 per ton reduction, or
• A fair, balanced rate of $10.96 per ton

This haul wasn’t underperforming.

The operation was outperforming the assumptions behind the rate, and those productivity gains were accruing to the hauler while cost creep continued unchecked — until the conversation shifted from rates to performance.

The Delta That Quietly Matters

Metric Assumed Actual Change

Cycle Time 135 min 126 min  +6.67%

Payload 22 tons 23 tons  +4.55%

Tons / Hour 9.78 10.95  +10.68%

Cost / Ton $12.27 $10.96 −$1.31 – 10.68%

A $1.31-per-ton difference doesn’t sound dramatic — until it runs day after day on high-volume internal transfers.

That’s how margin leaks without anyone “doing anything wrong.”

Why This Turns Into Hauler Pushback

The rate discussion wasn’t wrong.

It was misaligned.

The operation had improved:

• Faster cycles
• Heavier payloads
• Higher productivity

But the rate logic never moved with it.

From the hauler’s perspective, the rate felt justified.

From the operator’s perspective, costs felt too high — without a clean way to prove it.

That’s not a negotiation problem.

It’s a measurement problem.

The Quiet Advantage

HaulIQ doesn’t promise miracles.

What it delivers is far more valuable:

• Visibility into where freight costs actually come from
• Consistency across bids, transfers, and operations
• Confidence backed by structure — not gut feel

By tying haul rates to:

• Actual cycle time
• Actual payload
• Actual productivity

operators gain defensible adjustments, fairer discussions, and repeatable logic.

If This Feels Familiar

If you’re paying per ton but can’t clearly explain:

• Your true tons per hour
• Why a rate should move down
• Or whether performance has improved faster than pricing

That’s exactly the gap HaulIQ was built to close.

The most expensive freight mistakes don’t look like mistakes.

They look reasonable — until you break them down.

If you’d like to continue the conversation, the next step is simple:

send us a real haul you’d like pressure-tested.

No fluff.

No marketing math.

Just reality, quantified.