I discovered a $1.2M customer was losing the company $112K — here’s what I learned

I was working with a freight carrier that thought they had a superstar customer — $1.2M/year in revenue.

But once we factored in service hours, last-minute rerouting, special handling, and support time, we uncovered something surprising:

That customer was actually costing the company over $112,000/year.

This discovery completely changed how they approached pricing, staffing, and customer strategy.

It also led me to build a tool to help other companies visualize margin by customer, product, or region — but more importantly, it changed how I think about growth vs. profitability.

I’d love to hear from others here:

Have you had an experience where the “top” customer turned out to be a margin killer?

What tools or methods do you use to measure true profitability?

How do you balance chasing revenue with protecting profit?

Let’s trade stories — and if you want to see what this looks like in action, I’m happy to share what we built.