Hardee Transportation is a truckload carrier, with a central warehouse used as a dispatch center and for temporary cargo storage. Hardees president, Jim OBrien, has realized for quite some time that some of his customers are more profitable than others, as are certain freight lanes. Hardee uses average cost pricing for its major customers and structures its prices around discounts off published rates. Most discounts are based on total shipper freight volume. Jim knows that his drivers and dock people do uncompensated work for certain customers. Rather than just driving his over-the-road equipment, they help during loading by segregating freight on the shippers dock, weighing shipments, doing some labeling and even counting freight during loading. Jim sees these informal services as lost revenue opportunities but realizes the accessorial charges will be very difficult to cost and price because they wont be based on freight tariffs. Jim knows what he pays his drivers, the costs of equipment and fuel, and the overall costs of dispatch and dock operations but he does not have any form of activity-based costing or any other methodology. He is also worried that his system doesn't know where hidden costs are lurking. To add to his confusion, he is interested in value-of-service pricing but some of his pricing managers have urged him to keep the cost-of-service pricing but move to a marginal-cost model. He has hired you as a consultant to help him understand his options...

As a truckload carrier, Hardee's line-haul rates would most likely be:

per CWT

per CWT based on the NMFC

per hour

per mile