You ship to retail distribution centers several times a week. Your buyer measures you on whether the pallets land in the window that was booked, in the quantity that was ordered. Your carrier measures itself on whether the truck moved. That gap is where most consumer brands lose margin, and it is the gap a CPG freight broker is supposed to close.
Rockwall Services has brokered freight since 2009. We are asset light, so we own no trucks and place your freight with vetted carriers across all 48 contiguous states, Mexico, and Canada. We hold 100% retailer scorecard performance for CPG and distribution center deliveries. This page explains what that discipline actually consists of, and what you should ask any broker before you hand over a lane.
What a CPG broker does differently
A general freight broker sells capacity. You give it an origin, a destination, and a ready date. It finds a truck at a price and books it. The transaction ends when the truck is unloaded.
A CPG freight broker starts at the other end of the move. The retailer’s delivery window is the fixed point. Everything upstream gets planned backwards from it.
In practice that changes five things:
- The appointment comes first. We secure the DC window, then build the pickup and dispatch plan to hit it, rather than booking a truck and hoping a window is open when it arrives.
- The carrier gets a full briefing alongside the rate confirmation. Retail-bound freight carries rules about pallet configuration, labeling, driver check-in, lumper handling, and detention that a dry-van carrier hauling industrial freight has never seen.
- The paperwork is treated as freight. A missing purchase order number or a wrong ASN reference can produce a chargeback even when the truck arrives on time.
- Exceptions get worked in real time. A truck running four hours behind needs a reschedule attempt while it is still moving.
- Performance is reported against your scorecard. You should be able to see how the broker’s loads performed in the same terms your buyer uses.
That is discipline applied in a specific order. Most brokers skip it because their volume comes from industrial freight where the receiving door is forgiving.
Our Traditional Freight Brokerage service runs on that model for CPG and manufacturing shippers.
Retailer scorecards and your OTIF exposure
Large retailers score their suppliers on delivery performance and publish the results back to the vendor. On-time, in-full, usually shortened to OTIF, is the common frame. The mechanism is simple and unforgiving. Each purchase order gets a delivery window. If the freight arrives outside that window, or arrives short, the order fails. Enough failures and the retailer applies fines, then reduces your shelf presence, then reviews the vendor relationship.
The part worth understanding is how much of your score sits outside your four walls.
| Where the failure starts | Who controls it | What it does to the score |
|---|---|---|
| Production or pick shortfall | Your plant or 3PL | In-full failure |
| Appointment booked late or into a bad window | Your broker | On-time failure |
| Carrier accepts the load and covers it late | Your broker | On-time failure |
| Truck delayed in transit with no reschedule attempt | Your broker | On-time failure |
| Driver arrives without required documentation | Your broker and carrier | Refusal or chargeback |
| Retailer receiving backlog | The retailer | Disputed, sometimes appealable |
Count the rows your broker owns. For most brands with clean production, the majority of OTIF exposure lives in the transportation layer. Picking a broker on rate alone gets expensive in a way the rate sheet never shows.
We go deeper on how scorecard performance is built and defended in the retail compliance and OTIF guide.
DC appointment discipline
The delivery appointment is the single highest-leverage control point in retail-bound freight. A window that is booked early, confirmed, and matched to a realistic dispatch plan removes most of the failure modes above before a truck ever rolls.
Appointment discipline means a few concrete habits:
- Book the window as soon as the purchase order and the ready date are firm, rather than after the truck is covered.
- Choose a window the transit plan can actually hit, including a buffer for the lane and the season.
- Confirm the appointment number and pass it to the carrier in writing with the rate confirmation.
- Track the truck against the window and start the reschedule conversation the moment the math stops working.
- Log the outcome so the pattern on that lane and that DC is visible next quarter.
Retailer portals each behave differently, and the rules on rescheduling, lead time, and late arrival vary by account. The distribution center appointment scheduling guide covers the process in detail.
LTL consolidation economics for brands that do not fill a truck
A brand doing $8M to $50M in revenue often ships four to sixteen pallets to a given DC at a time. That volume is too much for parcel and too little for a dedicated truckload, so it defaults to LTL.
LTL is priced on class and handled through terminals. Every terminal touch adds a day of risk and a chance of damage, and retail-bound freight absorbs both poorly. The alternative is consolidation, where several orders moving to the same region get pooled into one move with fewer handling points.
Whether that math works for you depends on your order file, your DC mix, and how much lead time you have. A broker should model it against your real shipment history before proposing it. The LTL consolidation guide for CPG brands walks through the variables.
Carrier vetting for retail-bound freight
We own no trucks. Every load moves on a carrier we place it with, so vetting is the product.
Ask any broker how it qualifies a carrier before that carrier touches retail freight. A serious answer covers operating authority and current status, insurance certificates verified with the insurer rather than the carrier, safety history, equipment suitability for your product, and the broker’s position on carriers who re-broker loads to someone else. Ask what happens when a carrier fails a load. Ask whether that carrier moves your freight again.
Rockwall Services operates under USDOT 2628509 and MC 907777, and brokers to vetted carriers only.
What to ask before you hand over a lane
Take this list to every broker you evaluate, including us.
- Who books the DC appointment, you or us?
- How do you report performance against our retailer scorecard?
- What is your process when a truck is going to miss its window?
- Does the quote you give me hold at the dock, or does it move with accessorials?
- How do you vet carriers, and what disqualifies one?
- Who answers the phone at 6am when a driver is sitting at a closed gate?
- Which of our lanes would you consolidate, and what does that do to transit time?
The answers tell you whether you are buying capacity or buying compliance. Brands that need a broader transportation function, rather than lane-by-lane coverage, should look at our Fractional Transportation Department, and our full services overview shows how the pieces fit together. Growing brands can also read the freight guide for growing CPG brands, which covers what changes as volume scales.
Frequently asked questions
What does a CPG freight broker do that a general freight broker does not?
A CPG freight broker treats the retailer delivery appointment as the deliverable. That means booking the DC window before dispatch, matching the pickup plan to that window, briefing the carrier on the retailer’s rules, and reporting against the scorecard. A general broker measures the move. A CPG broker measures the receipt.
How does a freight broker affect our OTIF score?
Your broker controls the parts of OTIF that live outside your plant. Those are appointment booking, carrier selection, dispatch timing, in-transit visibility, and the response when a truck runs late. Rockwall Services holds 100% retailer scorecard performance for CPG and distribution center deliveries.
Our brand does not fill a full truck. Is a broker still worth it?
Yes. Brands shipping four to sixteen pallets at a time usually pay full LTL class rates with several handling points on each move. A broker can pool those orders into consolidated moves, cut the handling, and shorten the retail-bound transit. Ask any broker to model your actual order file before you commit.
How do we know the carrier hauling our freight is safe?
Ask the broker to describe its vetting process in writing. That covers authority and operating status, insurance certificates pulled from the insurer, safety history, freight-specific equipment checks, and how it treats brokered-away loads. Rockwall Services brokers freight only to vetted carriers under USDOT 2628509 and MC 907777.
What should we ask a CPG freight broker on the first call?
Ask who books the DC appointment, how they report scorecard performance, what happens when a truck misses a window, whether the quote holds at the dock, and how they vet carriers. Ask for the answers in writing. Call Rockwall Services at 972-685-6993 to run those questions.
Send us one lane and the last three months of shipment history for it. We will come back with an appointment plan and a quote that holds at the dock. Call 972-685-6993 or email contact@rockwallservices.net.