Most forwarders with meaningful air volume hold allotments: blocks of capacity bought from carriers ahead of the season, on the lanes where volume is predictable enough to commit. The commercial logic is sound. Committed space protects the lane in a tight market and buys a rate below spot.
Then the season starts. In the operations we have seen, the block flies somewhere between 60 and 85 percent full, depending on the lane and the week. The rest is paid for and never flown. On a 40-ton weekly allotment at 70 percent utilization, that is 12 tons of purchased space leaving empty every week, and the shortfall arrives 6 to 8 weeks later as a charge from the carrier or as a block quietly reallocated to a forwarder who fills it.
Why nobody owns the number
Ask who is responsible for allotment utilization and you will get 5 answers. Procurement bought the block. Sales sells the lane. Pricing set the rate. Operations tenders the cargo. Finance sees the invoice. The number sits between 5 functions and belongs to none of them, so it is reviewed at quarter end, which is 12 weeks too late to do anything about a given flight.
The per-shipment logic that empties the block is entirely rational. Spot drops below the contract rate on a soft week, the coordinator books spot, and the allotment flies empty. Each decision is correct in isolation. The quarter is not.
An allotment is an option, and it should be priced like one
The block is a right to space at a fixed rate. Its value on any given departure depends on 2 things: what spot is doing, and how much of the block is already filled. Those 2 numbers move every day, and the quoting screen almost never shows either of them.
That is the fix, and it is not a reporting fix. Allotment position needs to be an input to the quote. With 3 days to departure and 14 tons of the block unfilled, the marginal cost of that space is close to zero. The quote on that lane should come down to fill it, and sales should be pointed at it. With the block full, the next shipment goes to spot at spot cost, and the quote should reflect that too. The same lane, on the same day, has 2 different marginal costs depending on where the block stands. A rate card cannot express that. A pricing engine that sees the position can.
Give it one owner and a weekly cadence
Utilization needs an owner, and the owner should be whoever sets the price, because price is the only lever that moves fill before departure. The review cadence is weekly by lane and by flight, not quarterly by contract. The output of the review is a change to the quote, not a slide.
Carriers already run this arithmetic from their side. They know which forwarders fill their blocks and which do not, and the next negotiation prices that knowledge in. A forwarder that manages utilization at the quote arrives at that negotiation with data. One that discovers it at the invoice arrives with an explanation.