Factoring research and methodology

Four things carriers cannot currently look up anywhere. First, how factoring pricing is actually structured — flat versus tiered, and where the tier breaks fall. Second, the weight of non-rate charges: per-funding fees, monthly minimums and ancillary schedules, expressed as a share of total cost at realistic invoice sizes. Third, contract mechanics — typical term lengths, notice windows, recourse periods and how termination costs are calculated. Fourth, the friction in switching: how long releases and UCC terminations actually take.

Those are the variables that decide what factoring costs a small fleet, and they are consistently obscured by rate-first marketing. A useful index measures them, not the headline percentage.

Every future release will carry, on the same page as the finding:

• Sample size and the composition of that sample by fleet size and lane type.
• The collection window, with start and end dates.
• How observations were collected and normalized.
• Exclusions, with the reasoning stated.
• Known limitations and selection bias in the sample.
• A machine-readable summary so the finding can be cited accurately.

Findings will be dated and versioned. When a figure is superseded, the old one stays visible with a note rather than being silently replaced.

It would be easy to publish an average rate. It would also be worthless: without a sample description, an average across owner-operators hauling reefer and 40-truck flatbed fleets tells a carrier nothing about their own pricing, while lending false authority to whoever published it. We would rather be late and citable than early and wrong.