Scaling Like a GOAT: Why Cost-Per-Load Is the Broker Metric That Decides Who Survives

Truckers obsess over cost-per-mile. Most brokers can't tell you their cost-per-load.

That gap was the core of Scaling Like a GOAT, the latest FreightCaviar x Epay Manager live show. Clayton Griffin, President at OTR Solutions, joined co-host Reed Loustalot of Truck Parking Club and FreightCaviar’s Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski to unpack what it actually takes to scale a brokerage without letting the back office eat the margin.

Griffin has a unique vantage point. He joined OTR in 2012 as roughly employee number five, started on the AR side, and worked out of Epay Manager as a factoring customer for years before OTR acquired the platform in 2024. Today OTR's factoring side alone processes about 25,000 loads a day, with roughly $35 billion in carrier freight spend factored over 15 years.

In other words: OTR runs a broker-style back office at a scale few brokerages ever reach.

The math most brokers skip

Griffin walked through a scenario every broker who lived through the post-pandemic slide will recognize. 

Say your average customer spends $2,000 per load at a 13% margin. That's $260 per load. Your cost-per-load is $200. Not bad. Then rates fall to $1,500. Same 13% margin — now $195 per load. Your costs? Still $200, because they don't flex with customer rates.

"You're now losing money on every single load," Griffin said. "Growth becomes negatively accretive, and every load that you take is a loser."

It’s all about knowing where cost lives. Griffin splits it into two buckets:

• Direct costs that grow with every incremental load or invoice: operations, invoice processing, underwriting, account management.

• Go-to-market costs that win the business but don't necessarily scale per load.

That’s the fix: Shrink the direct bucket without degrading the customer experience. The payoff shows up in a downturn. Brokers running at $150 a load could still chase market share at thinner margins. Brokers at $200+ had to choose between shrinking, firing customers, or cutting people. 

Griffin made it clear that this isn't about removing humans.
"There is significant competitive advantage to having humans in the appropriate places doing the appropriate things," he said. "It becomes dangerous when you have humans in positions where you can add efficiency or platforms or AI," he added.

AI voice agents vs. platforms: where the cost actually goes

Everyone wants to swap headcount for AI. Griffin's question: Are you reducing cost, or just moving it?

Voice agents have a real advantage — speed. You can bolt one onto an existing process almost overnight. But when an agent is fielding calls from carriers and factors, you're paying by the minute. "If it's 100 loads and it requires one minute per load, if you do 200 loads, it's going to be 200 minutes," Griffin said. That's a variable cost that scales inefficiently.

A platform flips it. When payment status and pay dates sit in Epay Manager, carriers and factoring companies pull what they need 24/7 — with no marginal cost per lookup. Since carriers and factors see payment status for every Epay broker they work with in one login, it removes the need for excessive calls and emails. Reed also flagged a risk worth underlining: an agent reading from a financial database can hallucinate, or hand information to someone who shouldn't have it.

Then there's the document layer. In February, OTR acquired Peruse, the AI document audit technology now available through Epay Manager's AI Document Audit feature. Griffin compared it to ChatGPT's edge: More data means more context. A generalized LLM might pull a PO number off a BOL. Will it catch a receiver's handwritten note about one crushed pallet, or a struck-through quantity? Peruse was trained on that exact problem. OTR reports a 32% reduction in cost per invoice across 4+ million invoices a year and 70%+ no-touch processing.

Case study: River City Logistics

The proof point of the hour was Iowa-based River City Logistics. After implementing Epay Manager, River City Logistics increased load volume by about 70%—without adding back-office headcount.

"For us this is like the golden stat," Griffin said. It's also a model for growth beyond software.

River City Logistics pairs its brokerage with an asset division and warehousing. Reed described how CEO Chris Brewer puts them to work: Drop trailers and staged equipment for key customers, plus power-only moves run through the brokerage.  "Instead of saying we don't do that, he says, 'How can we do that?'" Griffin added. Lean back office, differentiated service. That's scaling like a GOAT.

Why this matters right now

The show landed at a pivotal moment for brokers. Costs are rising faster than volume:

• The Cass Freight Index showed August shipments up just 2.1% y/y while expenditures jumped 18.7%, with the truckload linehaul index up 11.3%.

• DAT dry van spot rates hit $2.21/mile in early September, up more than 33% y/y, as load posts rose 42% and truck posts fell 17%, per Trucking Partners. Capacity is leaving; demand isn't surging.

• Carrier costs are climbing on the contract side too. "Even as spot rates slow with modest sequential declines, the much larger contract market is adjusting higher," Tim Denoyer of ACT Research wrote in the Cass report. That puts pressure on brokers who are locked into customer contract rates.

Denoyer also sees capacity staying tight: 

That liability piece is its own cost-per-load line item. After the Supreme Court's May ruling opened brokers to negligent-selection claims, a Dallas County jury hit C.H. Robinson with a $604 million verdict, which the company is appealing. Tighter vetting and documentation mean more back-office work per load, unless it's automated.

Meanwhile, the biggest players are proving Griffin's thesis. C.H. Robinson hit mid-cycle NAST operating margin targets in Q2 — "despite being in the trough of the freight market demand cycle," per CEO Dave Bozeman — as average headcount fell 10.8% y/y while volume grew. RXO posted its highest gross profit per load in four years.

The megabrokers know their cost per load to the penny. Mid-market brokers competing against them need the same visibility.

Your Monday-morning playbook

1. Calculate it. Total operating costs ÷ loads moved. Then split direct from go-to-market.

2. Find the biggest direct bucket. Sit with that team. What's essential, and what's just "how we've always done it"?

3. Price your automation honestly. Per-minute tools scale with volume. Platforms don't.

4. Build the culture first. "If you're doing the same thing six months from now that you are today, you're likely behind," Griffin said.

The GOAT lightning round

The show closed with a debate. Snacks: Peanut M&Ms (Reed), sunflower seeds (Griffin), barbecue Fritos (Paul). Phrases: "Please advise," "send it over," and the DNU note that tells a 10-year-old horror story. Athletes: Jordan, Tiger, Phelps. The unanimous merch pitch? A hat that says cost-per-load.

Scale your brokerage like a GOAT

Epay Manager centralizes invoicing, document audit, and carrier payments in one controlled system, so every new load doesn't mean a new back-office hire. Schedule a demo with Epay Manager and see what your cost-per-load could look like.