Transportation Analyst

About the role

The Transportation Analyst collaborates with internal and external partners to exceed Sauer Brands’ supply chain requirements, ensuring efficient and effective transportation planning of all freight shipments. The role supports the strategic and tactical execution of the company’s Transportation Management System (TMS), maintains a transportation environment aligned with the Sauer Brands Recipe of executional excellence, and requires dependability, strong organizational and problem‑solving skills, multitasking ability, and a commitment to safety and special projects as assigned.

Responsibilities

• Plans all shipments in the TMS daily in a cost-effective and efficient manner, optimizing both service and cost.
• Develops recommendations for transportation utilization and mode optimization within Sauer Brands’ transportation network.
• Performs transportation analysis through a combination of data mining, data modeling, data analysis, cost/benefit analysis, process mapping, and problem analysis while executing day-to-day processes related to the area of responsibility.
• Develops and maintains cost estimates, forecasts, and cost models.
• Develops and analyzes key performance metrics and makes data-driven operational recommendations to meet and exceed Sauer Brands’ customer service and financial targets.
• Builds and maintains reporting and dashboards in Power BI and Excel to track freight cost, service performance, and network trends.
• Supports the annual transportation budget (AOP) and monthly budget-to-actual variance reporting by plant, including root-cause analysis of rate, volume, mode mix, fuel, and utilization drivers.
• Assists in the analysis of transportation costs and budgets across all Sauer Brands transportation spend categories, including freight-out, intercompany transfers, purchased finished goods freight-in, and raw material and packaging freight-in standards.
• Utilizes Sauer Brands’ carrier scorecard programs to monitor overall carrier performance against goals and expectations.
• Builds and maintains partnerships with customers, vendors, and Sauer Brands’ carrier base through timely, data-driven feedback to improve cost and service performance.
• Supports and communicates with internal business partners by providing updates on delivery service and accommodating routing and service level changes to meet Sauer Brands customer requirements.
• Supports and coordinates RFPs and carrier bids to improve Sauer Brands’ transportation network costs and service, and monitors post-award routing compliance against awarded carriers and rates.
• Supports freight bill audit, carrier accessorial and deduction review, and OS&D/claims resolution to ensure Sauer Brands is billed accurately.
• Identifies systemic and process improvement opportunities within the TMS through critical thinking and analysis.
• Supports the maintenance of the TMS; structure, set up, data integrity, and logic.
• Responsible for project management and oversight of initiatives that generate cost savings, cost