The splits that decide a logistics acquisition — asset-based versus brokered capacity, contract logistics versus transactional freight, specialized versus general — are all published on carrier and 3PL websites: fleet pages, warehouse maps, dedicated-service language, food-grade and hazmat credentials.
Databases mostly track size. We read the splits, across the entire active web, against your exact thesis.
Databases track logistics companies by size. Every thesis that matters is written in structure language — and structure lives on websites, not in database fields.
Tractor and trailer counts, trailer types, terminal maps, warehouse square footage — carriers publish what shippers verify before awarding lanes.
Dedicated contract carriage, contract warehousing, and multi-year 3PL relationships are marketed explicitly — separated from transactional freight by the service pages themselves.
Food-grade certifications, hazmat authority, temperature-controlled capability, bonded facilities, C-TPAT — each credential opens or closes an entire market segment.
A carrier hiring drivers across five terminals is disclosing demand no financial statement would show. Recruiting intensity is a live operational signal.
Triage clears the noise — load boards, directories, freight-tech shells. Deep extraction reads each survivor against your written thesis.
Reduced a 25K-domain industrial slice to ~17,300 in published runs.
ICP re-runs included; logistics theses sharpen after round one.
Applied from the 15-signal framework; these six decide logistics screens. Quoted evidence and source URLs throughout.
Asset-based or not — logistics’ first fork. We read fleet pages, equipment lists, terminal maps, and warehouse footprints, distinguishing owned capacity from partner-network claims by the language itself, quoted. Hybrids are labeled as exactly that.
Dedicated contract carriage, contract warehousing, standing 3PL relationships — sites market these commitments because shippers buy stability. A carrier whose site sells spot availability is a different acquisition than one selling multi-year dedicated fleets, whatever their truck counts.
Food-grade fleets, healthcare and pharma logistics, hazmat authority, project cargo, e-commerce fulfillment — claims are captured with their supporting credentials and customer evidence. A “food logistics” claim backed by certification language and named food customers scores differently than the phrase alone.
Terminal maps, cross-docks, warehouses with square footage, service radii, port and border positions — from the company’s own pages. Owned facilities are distinguished from agent and partner locations, because buying a network and buying a webpage are opposite transactions.
Hazmat authority, food-safety certifications, bonded and FTZ facilities, C-TPAT, TSA-adjacent programs — captured as exact claim text. In logistics these are not decorations; they are market access, and a thesis in regulated freight can cut the universe on credential evidence alone.
Acquired carriers keep names, liveries, and websites for driver retention and shipper continuity — sometimes indefinitely. We read newsrooms, footers, and about pages for the acquisition language and zero the score when it appears, quoted in the exclusion log. In consolidated niches the ratio runs hotter than the ~10% industrial average.
Thesis: independent asset-based carriers and 3PLs with temperature-controlled capability, dedicated-contract evidence, and food/beverage vertical depth, eastern US.
Fleet page details reefer trailers and tractor counts; services page leads with dedicated contract carriage; industries page names dairy and beverage customers. About page: “family-owned and operated since 1987” under a named second-generation president. Careers page recruiting drivers hard — capacity pressure made visible.
Homepage says “cold chain solutions for growing food brands” — no carrier keyword, no 3PL label. Facilities page reveals food-grade certified warehousing and a private fleet. Databases file it under cold storage real estate.
Well-known regional name whose newsroom announces acquisition by a carrier group three years ago — brand unchanged, ownership zero, sentence quoted.
Cannot be classified either way — flagged honestly with the signal count stated. The same 8/5/5/2 discipline as the published specimen reports.
The contract is coverage, classification, and auditability. Lane analysis and reference calls stay yours.
Rates, margins, lane profitability, customer concentration, equipment liens — nothing financial or contractual is website-visible, and we decline to guess.
Fleet counts are the company’s own published claims, dated and sourced. Diligence reconciles them against registries; we do not scrape safety records into screening claims.
No website signal supports intent to sell. Our standards exist precisely to keep that pretense out of the deliverable. No owner-age profiling, no personal speculation.
Driver-recruiting sites sometimes outshine the corporate site, splitting a carrier’s web presence — the census catches both, but notes the split. Owner-operators with minimal sites land in insufficient-evidence, stated as such.
Scored CSV plus evidence appendix — asset posture, contract language, specializations, footprint, credentials, ownership — quotes and URLs per carrier.
You challenge the top decile; we translate challenges into ICP revisions and re-run the universe. Included — logistics theses almost always sharpen after round one.
Letters citing a carrier's actual lanes, fleet, and certifications read like a shipper's RFP, not broker mail. Owners answer the former.
Annual monitoring re-reads the universe: fleet-page changes, new dedicated offerings, new credentials, new parents in the footer. Deltas arrive flagged, from €18,000 per thesis.
Leading company databases index the companies they found and measure their size. We start from the entire active web and read each company's structure against your exact thesis — evidence attached both ways.
| Question | Registry and database sourcing | Full-web census screening |
|---|---|---|
| Asset-based vs brokered capacity | A checkbox, often wrong | Read from fleet and network language, quoted |
| Dedicated contracts vs spot freight | Invisible | Contract-carriage and dedicated-service language captured verbatim |
| Food-grade / hazmat / bonded credentials | Sparse flags | Exact claim text with source URLs |
| The cold-chain operator without carrier keywords | Missed or misfiled | Classified from facilities evidence; the hidden-fit cohort is a standing output |
| The acquired carrier under a legacy brand | Listed as independent | Ownership zero, acquisition language quoted — about 1 in 10 keyword-perfect names |
| Thesis pivot to a new niche or lane | New search, new list, new dedupe | Scored universe re-runs against the revised ICP, included |
Each logistics subsegment keeps its acquisition evidence in a different place. The deliverable reports evidence density per subsegment, not uniform confidence.
Fleet and driver pages: equipment types and counts, terminal maps, and recruiting intensity — the most underrated signal in the vertical. A carrier hiring drivers across five terminals is disclosing demand no financial statement shows.
Facilities language: certified square footage, racking and cold-chain specifics, WMS and integration capability, retail-compliance experience. Operators with real capacity publish numbers; marketing shells publish adjectives.
The hardest read. Evidence that separates a durable operation from a load-board shell: longevity language, named teams, vertical case studies, and technology depth — portals, tracking, API documentation — rather than any single credential.
Tanker and hazmat, healthcare and medical courier networks, project and heavy-haul — gated by credentials and equipment evidence. The most decisively screenable: claims are either published and quotable or absent and disqualifying.
Name the structure you're buying — assets, contracts, lanes, credentials. A specimen arrives the same day; a scoped proposal follows.
Request the specimen report