Your pricing desk had two analysts. One gave notice six weeks ago. Since then, rate requests sit in the inbox overnight. The analyst who stayed answers the biggest accounts first and lets the small ones wait. Your sales reps ask for updates twice a day. Someone in operations is quoting on the side, between bookings.
The job post is live. Interviews are on the calendar. And nobody has put a number on what the empty chair costs you each week.
Most teams treat an open role as a saving. The salary is not going out, so the budget looks better. In logistics, that is rarely true. This post walks through where the money actually goes while a logistics role sits open, using a pricing seat as the example, and how to shorten the gap.
The empty chair is not free
Hiring takes time everywhere. SHRM’s 2025 recruiting benchmarking report puts the median time to fill at about a month and a half for both executive and nonexecutive roles, and notes that 69% of organizations struggle to recruit for full-time regular positions.
Logistics employers are competing for the same people at the same time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 338,000 open jobs in transportation, warehousing and utilities in August 2026 (preliminary data). Every one of those openings is a desk someone else is covering.
The salary you are not paying is only one line on the ledger. The other lines are harder to see, because they show up as slower work, tired people and business that never reaches you.
A pricing seat shows the real math
A pricing analyst is a good test case because the role sits right next to revenue. When the seat is empty, the cost does not wait for the month-end report. It shows up in the inbox.
Quotes that go out late, or not at all
Shippers and customers often request rates from more than one provider. A quote that arrives the next afternoon competes against quotes that arrived that morning. Some requests never get answered at all, because the person who stayed has to choose. Those are loads your carriers never move and invoices your AR team never sends.
This is the gap one of our clients described before working with TCA:
“Before we contracted TCA we had a major gap in our pricing department, causing missed opportunities and loss of revenue. For months we tried to recruit in the U.S. and were unsuccessful in securing the right talent. Jinna and her team were able to fill multiple positions for us and we could not be happier with the results.”
Sophia Huluta, U.S. Firm, Los Angeles, CA
Notice the words “for months.” A pricing gap that lasts a quarter is not a staffing inconvenience. It is a quarter of quotes your team could not send.
The people covering the gap
The work of an open seat does not disappear. It moves to someone else’s desk. Your remaining analyst starts earlier. Your operations coordinator learns to price a lane between tracking updates. Your sales lead builds quotes at night.
General workforce data shows how common this is. In a December 2024 LiveCareer survey of 1,160 U.S. workers, 77% said they are asked to take on work outside their job description at least weekly, and 29% pointed to unfilled positions as a source of that extra work, while 93% said the extra work leads to burnout.
In logistics, that pressure has a predictable next step. The person covering two seats starts looking at job posts too. Now you have two openings instead of one. If the next seat to open is in dispatch, read what it really costs to replace a dispatcher.
The hours your managers lose
Someone writes the job description. Someone screens resumes from people who have never seen a rate sheet. Someone sits in first interviews, second interviews and reference calls. That someone is usually your operations manager or your owner, the people whose time is worth the most.
Then the new hire starts, and the same manager trains them on your lanes, your carriers, your customers and your systems. The clock on an open role does not stop at the offer letter. It stops when the new person can work without a shadow.
Put your own number on it
You do not need a perfect model. You need a rough number you can defend. The American Society of Employers suggests a simple cost of vacancy formula: take the annual value the role produces and divide it by 220 working days to get a daily figure. Then add what you already know:
- Days open. Count from the day notice was given, not the day the post went live.
- Daily value of the seat. For a pricing role, use the revenue from quotes that seat used to win in a typical month, divided by working days.
- Coverage cost. Overtime paid to the people covering, plus work they set aside to do it.
- Recruiting time. Manager hours spent on screening and interviews, at their loaded rate.
- Ramp time. The weeks before the new hire works at full speed.
Run the numbers with your finance lead. Most teams find the weekly cost of an open revenue seat is larger than the weekly cost of the salary they are saving. That is the number to bring to your next hiring conversation.
Why logistics seats stay open longer
Logistics office roles ask for a narrow mix of skills: trade lane knowledge, carrier relationships, software fluency and the patience to work a busy inbox. The pool of people who already have all of that is small, and demand keeps growing. The BLS projects about 26,600 openings for logisticians each year over the coming decade, a category that overlaps many logistics planning and analysis roles.
A local search also limits you to people within commuting distance, or to remote candidates who may work hours that do not match your freight. When the right candidate is not in your zip code, the role stays open while you wait for them to appear.
What a structured four-week process looks like
The fastest way to shrink the cost of an open seat is to start the search with a clear process. At TCA, every logistics staffing engagement follows the same four steps. Timing depends on the role and on how quickly your team reviews candidates, so treat this as the process, not a guarantee.
- Week 1. Discover. You share what the seat needs to do, and you complete our New Customer Package.
- Week 2. Define. We turn that into a clear role: tasks, systems, hours and who the seat works with.
- Week 3. Select. You see at least two candidates, each with a full profile and Predictive Index results. You interview and you decide.
- Week 4. Launch. We build a 30/60/90-day plan, hold the IT integration meeting (virtual desktop and a U.S. phone line) and start training.
Before you see a single profile, every candidate completes a behavioral and cognitive assessment. English is checked through the interview and a role-specific work test, so you see how someone handles a real task, not just a conversation.
After the start date, we run check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days, then quarterly reviews. Training combines TCA’s own programs with a company-specific onboarding we build with you. The scope of the seat, including whether it contacts your carriers or customers directly, is the role you define with us.
Why look beyond your local market
TCA recruits highly educated, bilingual professionals in Colombia for U.S. and Canadian companies. They work in your time zone, so a rate request that lands mid-afternoon gets worked the same afternoon, not after an overnight handoff.
Working English matters on a pricing desk, where a misread accessorial or a vague email turns into a billing dispute.
We also handle the parts that slow most hires down after the offer: IT setup, security, payroll and compliance with Colombian labor law. Your team focuses on training the person on your freight. We handle the rest.
Stop paying for the empty chair
Every week a logistics seat stays open, you pay for it in quotes, overtime and the patience of the people covering. Put a number on it, then shorten the gap. Tell us about the seat you need to fill and we will walk you through what the next four weeks could look like.
Request a Consultation
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Tell us about the seat. We will walk you through the four-week process.