Senior Load Planner

Most weeks tend to involve complex load planning, carrier coordination, junior-planner mentoring, and the steady cadence of operations leadership — leading optimization on multi-stop or multi-mode loads, working with carrier sales on capacity, mentoring junior load planners, supporting customer-facing transportation decisions. You're often the senior planning voice when loads need integrated thinking across cost, service, and constraints. Load-cost performance and on-time service tend to be the visible measures.

What surprises people new to the role is the optimization complexity at scale — load planning involves carriers, equipment types, drive-time rules, and customer windows simultaneously, and the senior planner navigates trade-offs that simple tools can't resolve. Variance across employers runs wide: at large shippers and 3PLs senior load planning is structured with optimization tools; at smaller operations the work runs on spreadsheets and senior judgment.

The role tends to suit people who are analytically rigorous, transportation-fluent, and patient with constraint-based work. CTL and APICS credentials anchor advancement. The trade-off is the always-on dimension — freight moves around the clock, and senior load planners often field after-hours decisions.