Lower cost
We compare carriers and 3PLs on your real orders, negotiate the contracts, recover invoice errors and claims, and keep the savings visible after launch.
Carrier selection · 3PL selection · contracts · invoice recovery
For Brands
Senior fulfillment and delivery leadership, without hiring a team. Carrier RFP is the engine, the rest of the function rides on top.
Where it hurts
Most brands arrive with one of these. The pattern is always the same: name the problem, fix it, and prove it in dollars.
We benchmark your last 90 days lane by lane against our carrier rate database, then take your volume to the full market. Your contracts, your rates, no markup in the middle.
Freak Athlete: multiple six figures cut →We run your 3PL search or renegotiation end to end, vetting partners against your real order data so the handoff actually fits the brand.
Pepper Pong: per-order cost nearly halved →We run your first 3PL search end to end, from sourcing and an in-person warehouse visit to signed rates, so the handoff pays for itself instead of costing you.
Wayve Wear: time back, at break-even →What's included
The individual services matter because of what they change for your team and your customers.
We compare carriers and 3PLs on your real orders, negotiate the contracts, recover invoice errors and claims, and keep the savings visible after launch.
Carrier selection · 3PL selection · contracts · invoice recovery
We run the analysis, market process, implementation oversight, and partner follow-through while your team keeps the operation moving.
Sourcing · implementation · claims · partner oversight
We connect shipping cost, carrier performance, returns, tracking, and repeat purchase so each change can be measured against the customer outcome.
Performance · tracking · returns · connected data
Client stories
Freak Athlete
“Iron Margin really meticulously got costs down. He saved us multiple six figures, and of course, that's something that's going to scale for us.”
Wayve Wear
“I didn't really have to do anything in this whole process other than go to some meetings and do a gut check. If I were doing this by myself, I wouldn't know what to ask, how to vet their answers, or how to negotiate rates.”
Pepper Pong
“He was able to nearly cut our per-order cost in half. That's real money back on every order.”
Health Y Sol
The savings are measured per label. When a carrier disruption stranded their packages, we built the claims case and recovered the money.
FAQ
We are your outsourced fulfillment and delivery advisor. Carrier RFPs sit at the center of the work. The rest wraps around them: strategy and sourcing, contract negotiation and renegotiation, invoice recovery, claims, SLA monitoring, accessorial review, order management and WMS evaluation, 3PL sourcing and oversight, and shipping and delivery CX. One service, built for DTC brands on Shopify.
We run the carrier and fulfillment work: benchmarking, RFPs, negotiation, invoice recovery, claims, SLA and accessorial review, and 3PL oversight. Your team keeps shipping exactly as it does today. We handle the analysis and the market benchmarking and bring you clear options; you approve every decision.
Rate brokers and freight aggregators make money by marking up carrier rates and taking a cut of every shipment. We work for you. Your carrier contracts are yours, the rates are yours, the savings stay yours. We sit on your side of the table, not in the middle of your invoices.
USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, DHL, Veho, OnTrac, GLS, SpeedX, UniUni, and more. We benchmark across all of them.
If you're a DTC brand shipping parcels, talk to us. We run a free evaluation for every brand: we benchmark your last 90 days against our carrier database and show you the savings that are actually there. You make an informed decision from real numbers, not a sales pitch, and there's no commitment to find out.
Most shippers who come to us have negotiated before. We benchmark against our full carrier dataset. If you're already at market, we'll tell you. If not, we find the gap.
We benchmark all-in cost, not headline rates: surcharges, fuel, delivery-area fees, and dimensional weight, held at the same service level, so the number survives contact with a real invoice. You get the before and after in dollars per order, and we keep auditing invoices monthly so the savings hold.
Yes. We can help whether you ship in-house or work with a 3PL. The negotiation work is the same; the integration step changes depending on who's running the labels. If your 3PL isn't pulling its weight, we also source and vet new ones.
Self-serve apps advertise headline discounts that look great (often 70% off retail), but those are still retail rates with platform margin baked in. At meaningful volume you can negotiate directly with the carriers and get materially better pricing than any aggregator pass-through.
No. We negotiate better rates with your existing carriers first. If a new carrier offers meaningfully better pricing, we'll flag it, but you always decide.
You can, and it's worth asking. The difference is knowing the market. Your rep knows what you currently pay; they won't tell you what comparable brands pay for the same lanes. Because we see market rates across many programs, we can tell whether an offer is genuinely competitive and where a fair, better-than-market deal sits. This isn't about forcing a carrier into something that doesn't work for them. It's about both sides landing on pricing that's better than the market, which is what makes the relationship last.
Only if you want them to. We can benchmark and negotiate quietly in the background, and the carrier simply sees a better-informed counterparty. A well-run RFP is normal procurement; carriers expect it, and it doesn't damage the relationship.
We only shift volume onto a carrier after a small live test on your real orders, so you see delivery and tracking quality before committing. Reviews for every parcel carrier skew harsh, USPS included, so we judge on your actual results, not star ratings. We start conservative, watch the first weeks closely, and pull back fast if service slips.
That is what we protect hardest. We hold service level constant when we compare, run a small test before scaling, and watch transit time and first-scan speed in the early weeks. If a carrier is slow to post tracking or adds a day, we catch it early and adjust. Cheaper is only worth it if the customer experience holds.
Sometimes, because carriers bill on dimensional weight, not just actual weight. Each carrier applies a DIM factor that turns box size into billable weight, so the same item in a larger box can cost more. Matching your box sizes to the right carrier mix is part of the work, so you are not paying to ship air.
We do. Filing and chasing carrier claims is part of the ongoing work, not something you handle alone. We escalate to our carrier contacts, track each claim to reimbursement, and flag patterns before they become a trend. When you move to a new carrier, we set up the support path first, so there is a clear point of contact the day something goes wrong.
About 2 weeks from kickoff to a benchmarked recommendation, and typically 4 to 6 weeks to fully live. We've moved faster than that, but the timeline depends on the complexity of the project and how quickly we can get what we need from your side. Carrier setup and integration are the long pole, not the analysis. From there we onboard the new carrier and review the first invoices, with the rest of the work running alongside.
An export of your last 90 days of shipping. Each row needs at minimum: origin zip, destination zip, weight, dimensions, carrier, service type, and cost. Format varies by WMS (ShipStation, EasyPost, Shopify, Shiphero, Extensiv exports all work). We'll guide you through the export on the intro call.
Light. We need one export of your last 90 days to start, usually a few clicks in your platform, plus a short call to confirm box sizes and weights. No engineering or integration project on your end.
You do. We negotiate on your behalf, but the contracts are between you and the carrier. No Iron Margin in the middle, no third-party billing layer.
Yes. Standard NDA on request before you share anything. Your shipping data and carrier contracts are used only to benchmark and negotiate on your behalf. We never sell your data or share it with carriers, and access stays limited to the team working your account.
Once a new carrier program is live, the work shifts to the rest of the scope. Invoice recovery, SLA enforcement, claims, accessorial and surcharge review, contract renegotiation, order management and technology evaluations, 3PL oversight, and returns and delivery CX. The goal is no invoice error or SLA left unclaimed, month over month.
You keep everything. The contracts are in your name, the rates stay in place, and the savings continue. There is nothing to unwind and no carrier relationship to untangle. That is the advantage of us sitting on your side of the table instead of in the middle.
Still have a question? Book a call and we'll walk through it.
Carrier & Fulfillment Evaluation
The Iron Margin Carrier and Fulfillment Evaluation Report is custom built. We benchmark your last 90 days lane by lane against our carrier rate database, then show where your rates sit against market and what is recoverable.
Get your evaluation report
Start with a 30-minute intro call. We learn your setup, your carriers, and your volumes, and walk you through exactly what we'd recommend.
30-minute intro call. Free evaluation. No commitment.