What changes on Monday for your LCL team
A market study is only worth it if it moves decisions. This preview shows, decision by decision, which data answers it, which concrete action it triggers, who carries it out and which metric measures it.
The figures on this page are illustrative. They show the format and the level of detail. In the study they are replaced with real foreign-trade data.
Six accounts share this container today, each with between 2 and 9 CBM. When an account grows past its breakpoint, it starts filling its own FCL. Knowing which accounts are close to that point, and what to do with each one, is what the study delivers.
Five decisions the study settles
Pick a decision. You will see the evidence that answers it, the action it triggers, who carries it out and how it is measured. The example changes with the country shown.
Rule of the study: no finding goes in unless it changes a decision.
Where should we put capacity and sales focus?
LCL market data: opportunity by port and by trade lane.
Concentrate allocations, CFS and selling hours on the ports and trade lanes with the most uncovered opportunity.
The LCL leader in each country, with Operations and CFS.
LCL share at the prioritized ports.
TimingNext capacity-planning cycle.
In Brazil, Santos and Itajaí concentrate 64% of the LCL opportunity, and the China → Santos lane carries 38% of the volume. Allocations and selling hours go there first.
Your first 90 days with the study in hand
ExampleDays 1 to 30
- Each salesperson receives a prioritized account list.Accounts
- The message and the decision-maker for each vertical are defined.Verticals
- The two most visible service gaps in the quotes get fixed.Competitors
Days 31 to 60
- Allocations and selling hours move to the priority ports and lanes.Capacity
- Volume contracts are offered to accounts in the decision zone.Verticals
- First tracking dashboard for the account list.Accounts
Days 61 to 90
- Penetration targets by country and vertical approved.Investment
- Triggers agreed with each country leader.Investment
- First review of share against each competitor.Competitors
Only the cargo a carrier can win
We start from each country’s containerized cargo and remove reefer and the cargo a forwarder already controls. What remains is the LCL market without reefer and without forwarders, with its ports and its five main trade lanes.
Answers: Where should we put capacity and sales focus?
From total cargo to the real opportunity
IllustrativeIndex: the country’s total containerized cargo = 100. Forwarder cargo is separated by classifying the consignee in the database.
In Brazil, out of every 100 units of containerized cargo, 13 are a direct LCL opportunity for a carrier. Today LCL accounts for 6.1% of that flow.
Ports with the opportunity
IllustrativeFive main trade lanes
Percentage of LCL volume excluding reefer and forwarders.
- Concentrate capacity and sales focus on Santos and Itajaí: together they account for 64% of the LCL opportunity in Brazil.
- Reinforce the China → Santos lane (38% of volume) and review frequencies and allocations on China → Itajaí and USA → Santos.
- Do not spend sales effort on the remaining 87% of containerized cargo: it is reefer or cargo a forwarder already controls.
- Owner: LCL leader for Brazil, with Operations and CFS. Metric: LCL share at the prioritized ports.
Every flow, every port, every account
Foreign-trade data (Veritrade) for the last five years, processed in Python and published in Power BI for the whole division. Here, an anonymized sample for the selected country, laid out as a working list for Sales.
Answers: Which accounts should we call first?
Account list for the selected country
Illustrative| Account | Port | HS | Vertical | Mode | Volume m³/month | Δ 12 mo | Signal | Decision-maker | Suggested action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IMP-0417 | BRSSZ | 8708 | Automotive | LCL | 14.2 | +22% | Migrating to LCL | Procurement | Call Procurement and offer a fixed weekly sailing and a committed date. |
| IMP-0932 | BRSSZ | 3402 | Chemicals | LCL | 9.6 | +15% | — | Procurement | Maintain and keep tracking the volume. |
| IMP-1288 | BRITJ | 6110 | Retail | LCL | 17.8 | -6% | At risk of moving to FCL | Supply chain | Propose a volume contract before it moves to FCL. |
| IMP-0561 | BRPNG | 8517 | High-tech | LCL | 11.3 | +31% | Migrating to LCL | Supply chain | Call Supply chain and offer secure cargo with full traceability. |
| IMP-0355 | BRSSZ | 3305 | FMCG | LCL | 12.7 | +26% | Migrating to LCL | Supply chain | Call Supply chain and offer a stable rate per CBM and frequent replenishment. |
| IMP-0774 | BRITJ | 6204 | Retail | FCL | 72.5 | -2% | — | — | No LCL action for now. |
Anonymized accounts. The signals are observable in the database without identifying the carrier: an account is flagged as migrating when its shipments stay small and frequent while its volume grows more than 20% in 12 months, and at risk when it already exceeds 16 m³ per month with falling volume, because it is consolidating into fewer and larger shipments. The thresholds are calibrated by vertical and country.
- Hand the list to Sales this week: 3 accounts migrating to LCL and 1 at risk of moving to FCL in the Brazil sample.
- For each migrating account: call the decision-maker of its vertical with the offer shown in the last column.
- For the accounts at risk: propose a volume contract before they move to FCL.
- Owner: Sales, with the country LCL leader. Metric: meetings and quotes on the list, and conversion by salesperson.
Who wins, why and where
Outside Brazil customs does not identify the NVOCC, so competitive position is not calculated: it is gathered. A strengths-and-weaknesses analysis of the five main LCL providers without forwarders, compared with your operation, built from interviews with ex-executives, mystery shopping and the voice of shippers: how they position themselves, where they hold structural advantages, where they are weak and what they changed. In this sample they appear as Competitor A to E.
Answers: What should we defend and what should we attack against each competitor?
Positioning against your operation
Illustrative| Provider | Speed | Price | Reliability | Digital | Customs support | Door to door |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your operation | ||||||
Score from 1 to 5. Select a competitor to see its analysis.
LCL share by carrier in Brazil, through 2023
| Carrier | Share | Δ 12 mo (points) |
|---|---|---|
| Your operation | 24% | ▼ -1.8 |
| Competitor A | 18% | ▲ +2.4 |
| Competitor B | 16% | ▲ +0.9 |
| Competitor C | 14% | ▼ -0.3 |
| Competitor D | 9% | ▲ +0.6 |
| Competitor E | 7% | ▲ +1.0 |
| Others | 12% | — |
Competitor A
IllustrativeMystery shopping
| Provider | Rate | Response | Extra charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your operation | 100 | 6 h | +0% |
| Competitor A | 88 | 20 h | +9% |
| Competitor B | 96 | 8 h | +3% |
| Competitor C | 92 | 14 h | +6% |
| Competitor D | 108 | 5 h | +1% |
| Competitor E | 84 | 30 h | +14% |
The same 6 m³ quote requested as a shipper. Rate: your operation = 100. Response in hours. Extra charges at confirmation.
- Defend digital: there your operation scores equal to or better than all competitors. Put it at the front of every proposal.
- Close price first (3 versus 5) and customs support (3 versus 5).
- Against Competitor A, sell where it is weak. Strict cutoffs and rolled cargo in peak season. On quotes, your operation responds in 6 h and Competitor A in 20 h, and Competitor A adds +9% in charges at confirmation.
- Your share in Brazil falls 1.8 points over the last 12 months with a complete bill of lading (2023): defend the highest-volume accounts first.
- Owner: LCL leader, Pricing and Product. Metric: win rate against each competitor and quote response time.
What triggers LCL versus FCL
Why shippers move from FCL to LCL and back, their five main reasons, the breakpoint between modes, who decides inside the account and which service moments weigh most.
Answers: How should we sell in each vertical?
Where each thing in this section comes from
Thousands of importers, five years, quarterly cuts.
- The breakpoint: the shipment size at which an account stops behaving as consolidated cargo and starts filling a container.
- How many accounts sit in that zone today, by vertical and by country, and which way they are moving.
- Frequency, seasonality and trajectory of every importer, quarter by quarter.
20 in-depth interviews: one per vertical and country.
- Why they choose LCL and what would make them switch mode.
- Who decides inside the account and who has to be convinced first.
- Which service moments weigh and what gets tolerated without breaking the relationship.
Twenty interviews do not measure: they explain. No figure in this section is projected to the market from them, and the ones that are projected come from the database. If your team needs statistically projectable figures by vertical, a quantitative survey can be added and is quoted separately.
Breakpoint between LCL and FCL
Data + interviewsCBM per month and per account. The dotted line marks a full 20-foot container (33 CBM). The zone is measured on the shipment-size distribution of every importer in the database, and the interviews validate it. In automotive the decision happens between 12 and 18 CBM per month.
What weighs when changing mode
Five reasons to choose LCL
Relative weight from 0 to 100, built from the interviews and checked against the behavior observed in the database. It ranks reasons; it is not a measurement projectable to the market.
Who decides inside the account
Qualitative · 20 interviewsRelative weight of each role, not a percentage of decisions: it comes from the order in which the roles appear in that vertical’s interviews.
Service moments that weigh most
How to win
Offer a fixed weekly sailing and a committed date. Discuss the rate per CBM afterwards.
- Talk first to Procurement and then to Supply chain: that is the order of influence the automotive interviews show.
- Open with: smaller lots with just-in-time production.
- Offer a volume contract when a automotive account reaches 12 CBM per month. Between 12 and 18 it decides its mode.
- Take care of the service moment that weighs most: exception handling.
- Owner: Sales and Pricing. Metric: pipeline by vertical and accounts retained when they move to FCL.
Where LCL penetration will grow
Three macro scenarios by country and, by vertical, which ones raise their LCL penetration and which revert to FCL, with the leading indicators that warn you in advance. The full method, with its assumptions and its limits, is below.
Answers: Where should we invest over the next 12 to 36 months?
LCL penetration of containerized flow (%)
Illustrative| Scenario | Today | 12 mo | 24 mo | 36 mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 6.1 | 6.6 | 7.0 | 7.4 |
| Base | 6.1 | 7.2 | 8.2 | 9.0 |
| Accelerated | 6.1 | 8.1 | 9.7 | 11.2 |
Brazil: the starting point comes from the complete LCL/FCL split in the data.
Gain at 36 months
IllustrativeEquivalent to about 360 thousand additional CBM per year in Brazil.
Base. Scenario hypothesis: GDP at consensus and stable freight rates. Continues the current trend.
By vertical, base scenario
IllustrativeChange in penetration points at 36 months, average of the four countries.
How the forecast by vertical is built
Historical base
Consolidable volume by vertical and country, five years with quarterly cuts. That is where each vertical’s trend and seasonality come from.
Drivers
Each vertical is modeled against two or three of its own indicators (automotive production, retail sales, inventory-to-sales, electronics imports) plus freight rate levels and exchange-rate volatility. Elasticity is estimated on the historical series.
Scenarios
The drivers are projected along three paths using public macro consensus: IMF, central banks and sector outlooks. That gives the conservative, base and accelerated cases.
Mode shift
How much volume can cross from FCL to LCL is not free: it depends on how many accounts sit near their breakpoint today, and that is counted in the database.
Calibration
The interviews adjust the direction and discard what the model cannot explain. The trigger thresholds are set with your team.
This is not a forecast with a confidence interval. It is a scenario model with elasticities estimated on short series: it is for setting targets and knowing when to change plan, not for predicting an exact figure. Every scenario assumption is delivered open, so your team can move it.
Triggers: when the indicator warns, the team acts
Example| Vertical | Leading indicator | If it happens | Your team does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automotive | Automotive production | Rises two quarters in a row | Reserve additional weekly allocations at the main port. |
| Retail | Retail sales | Cool for two quarters in a row | Offer volume contracts and support the move to FCL for large accounts. |
| FMCG | Inventory-to-sales ratio | Rises above its average | Offer frequent replenishment so the account frees up working capital. |
| High-tech | Electronics imports | Grow two quarters in a row | Reinforce allocations with traceability and cargo security. |
| Chemicals | Chemical input imports | Fall or turn volatile | Review allocations and prioritize accounts with contracts. |
| All | Manufacturing PMI | Falls below 50 | Move to the conservative scenario and hold back capacity investment. |
| All | Exchange-rate volatility | Increases sharply | Offer smaller lots at a stable rate to accounts that want to protect working capital. |
The exact thresholds are set with your team during the study.
- Set the target for Brazil: from 6.1% to 9.0% of containerized flow in 36 months, in the base scenario.
- Prioritize High-tech and Automotive, the verticals that raise their LCL penetration the most.
- Support the move of Retail to FCL instead of losing the account: it is the vertical that reverts.
- Agree the triggers in the table with each country leader. Owner: you, with the country leaders and Finance. Metric: LCL penetration by vertical against the base scenario.
What is in, and what is not, country by country
The study covers Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Chile. All four get the same method and the same deliverables. What changes is how far the customs data reaches in each one, and it is stated here without fine print.
Why it matters: what the data does not give is covered with interviews and mystery shopping, and is delivered flagged as estimated.
- Foreign-trade flows from 2021 to the latest closed quarter, by HS code, importer, exporter, port of loading and unloading, weight and value.
- Volume in m³ estimated from weight using coefficients by HS code.
- Five main trade lanes and opportunity by port.
- Two interviews with Maersk LCL leaders, mystery shopping of competitors and ten competitor dossiers, with a deep read on the five that compete head-on.
- Playbooks by vertical, a benchmark of your operation and Power BI with the three scenarios.
Brazil
USD 31,000The only country where the carrier came from the data, and only through 2023.
Includes- Complete LCL/FCL split, straight from the data.
- Complete NVOCC and VOCC identification, through 2023.
- Six shipper interviews, the largest sample of the four.
- Carrier identification from 2024 onward: Brazil stopped publishing the bill of lading at that level of detail. The picture through 2023 stands as a baseline.
Peru
USD 24,500Complete mode split, no carrier in the data.
Includes- Complete LCL/FCL split, straight from the data.
- Four shipper interviews.
- NVOCC and VOCC identification: customs does not report it. Each competitor’s position is gathered through mystery shopping, interviews and the sailing schedules each consolidator publishes.
- A local interview with an automotive shipper: that playbook relies on the data and on the other three countries.
Colombia
USD 26,500Estimated mode split, no carrier in the data.
Includes- Five shipper interviews.
- Complete ports, verticals, importers and trade lanes.
- A direct LCL/FCL split: it is estimated with average TEU ratios and the mirror customs data of the main trading partners.
- NVOCC and VOCC identification: customs does not report it. Each competitor’s position is gathered through mystery shopping, interviews and the sailing schedules each consolidator publishes.
Chile
USD 26,500The country with the most limits in the data.
Includes- Five shipper interviews.
- Complete ports, verticals, importers and trade lanes.
- A direct LCL/FCL split: it is estimated with average TEU ratios and mirror customs data.
- NVOCC and VOCC identification: Chilean customs does not report it and does not allow linking the cargo owner to its LCL provider. Share by competitor is built from mystery shopping, interviews and the sailing schedules each consolidator publishes, and is delivered flagged as estimated.
The price
Four-country programUS dollars. Ten weeks from the kickoff meeting.
Every deliverable exists to trigger an action. If a document does not change what your team does on Monday, it does not go into the study.
Power BI base with the accounts by vertical
Every importer with its vertical, its port, its volume, its trend, the decision-maker to call and the suggested action. It is the list Sales works from, and the base stays with your team with the model and the assumptions open.
Mystery shopping of the competitors
Rate, response time and the charges that appear at confirmation, requested as a shipper in each country. It tells you where to beat them and what to fix in your own quote.
Competitor dossiers
Ten per country, with a deep read on the five that compete head-on: structural advantage, where they are weak, recent moves, route focus and pricing stance.
Playbooks by vertical and country
One page per vertical: why that vertical chooses LCL, who decides inside the account, what to open the conversation with and from how many CBM to offer a volume contract.
Benchmark of your operation against the market
Where you score equal to or better than every competitor, where the gap is, and which one to close first.
Scenarios with triggers
The penetration target at 12, 24 and 36 months by country and vertical, and the leading indicator that tells you when to change plan, with the threshold agreed with your team.
Executive presentation and recommendations
Thirty to fifty slides and a closing workshop. Every recommendation comes with its owner, its metric and its timing, not as a list of good ideas.
- Taxes and withholdings that apply in each country.
- Travel, if your team asks for in-person sessions. Quoted separately and only if you ask for it.
The ten interviews with competitors’ ex-executives, the benchmark, the presentation and the workshop are done once and shared across the four countries. This is the price of the complete program: the regional work is already shared across them, so a smaller scope is not the subtraction of these figures and is quoted separately. Valid until: October 31, 2026.
Customs publish with a lag, so the latest available quarter is confirmed at kickoff: today the series runs through the second quarter of 2026. Brazil’s bill-of-lading detail reaches 2023 and has not been published at that level since.
The same method is available in Panama, Ecuador, Argentina, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. In Central America the data is poorer: Guatemala and El Salvador only publish FOB value and weight, and Costa Rica has no bill of lading.
How we reach these answers
Data analysis is combined with voices from shippers, from competitors’ ex-executives and from your own team, and it closes in ten weeks.
Why trust it: every data point has its source and every conclusion goes through interviews.
Foreign-trade database
Veritrade, by country, from 2021 to the latest closed quarter, with quarterly cuts. Processed in Python and published in Power BI, and it can be updated every quarter.
20 shipper interviews
Spread by vertical and by country, with the people who decide the transport mode inside each account.
10 interviews with competitors’ ex-executives
Among them, profiles of DHL, CH Robinson, DSV, Hellmann, Kuehne+Nagel, Ecoline, Shipco, Globelink and Craft.
8 interviews with Maersk LCL leaders
Two per country, to compare the internal view with what customers see.
Mystery shopping
Quotes requested as a shipper from competitors, to compare rate, response and charges.
Scenarios
Based on GDP, sector demand, freight and exchange-rate volatility, plus what the interviews say.
Shipper interviews by vertical and country
| Vertical | Brazil | Colombia | Chile | Peru |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automotive | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Retail | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| FMCG | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| High-tech | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Chemicals | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total: 20 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
Deliverables
- Executive presentation of 30 to 50 slides: what is happening, why, who wins and what to do.
- Competitor dossiers: ten per country, with a deep read on the five that compete head-on with your operation. Strengths, weaknesses, moves, route focus and pricing stance.
- Benchmark of your operation against the market: gaps and defensible advantages.
- One-page playbooks by vertical and by country.
- Power BI with LCL flows and a forecast by scenario.
Ten weeks from the first meeting to the recommendations
Market size is the least useful number
What is useful is knowing which accounts are structurally migrating to LCL, and why, before others capture them. Is a 30-minute conversation worth it to see which of these five decisions are most urgent for your team?
Book 30 minutes with DiegoLogistics and Industry Practice Head
Americas Market Intelligence
95 Merrick Way, Third Floor, Coral Gables, FL 33134
drodriguez@americasmi.com
+1 305-303-6278
americasmi.com