A coordination business more than a capacity business. Your value is making sure the paperwork, the transfer and the two carriers line up.
Why the mode is structurally different, the three crossing models, the parties and who does what, operating differences, security and cargo risk, KPIs and the failure modes.
Your customs broker relationships matter as much as your carrier relationships here, and most brokerages entering the mode treat them as an administrative vendor.
Documentation first-pass rate is the number to build the desk around. It is upstream of border dwell, held shipments and transit variance, and almost entirely within your control.
No industry benchmarks. Where a figure appears it is either sourced to a public filing and cited, or labelled as the author’s own judgment. Written by an operator with fifteen years building and scaling freight brokerages.