Eighteen months to profitability for a 4,000-person logistics operator
A cost-base rebuild that protected headcount, renegotiated the fleet, and returned the operator to positive EBITDA two quarters ahead of plan.
Months to positive EBITDA
Cost-to-serve reduction
Involuntary headcount cuts
The Challenge
The operator was losing 6% of revenue every month across a hub-and-spoke network built for a market that had shifted from B2B pallets to fragmented D2C parcels. Two prior consultants had proposed 20% headcount cuts; the board had rejected both.
We were asked to find a route to profitability that kept the workforce intact — and prove it in ninety days before a critical debt refinancing.
Our Approach
Week one was spent on the docks and in the cabs, not in the boardroom. Our operating team shadowed 24 routes across four hubs and mapped every touchpoint against the actual revenue it earned.
The diagnosis was structural, not behavioural: three of the twelve hubs were absorbing 40% of network cost against 11% of volume. Fleet contracts had auto-renewed at 2019 rates. Route optimisation software had been switched off in 2022 after a bad rollout.
"They walked the floor before they touched the model. That's why the plan actually worked when we handed it to plant managers."
— Chief Operating Officer, client operator
We rebuilt the network around six regional consolidation points, renegotiated the fleet at market rates, and re-launched the routing system with a two-week driver onboarding programme owned by the operations team, not IT.
The Outcome
The engagement delivered 18 on months to positive ebitda, 31% on cost-to-serve reduction, and 0 on involuntary headcount cuts — measurable, defensible, and owned by the client team on day one after handover.
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