How Many Sales Reps Do I Need to Hire for My Refrigerated Transport Company?

Look, I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and the number one thing that drives me up a wall is when some founder—usually a brilliant logistics operator who can tell you the BTU rating of a reefer unit in their sleep—asks me, “Kory, how many sales reps do I need to hire?” as if I’m supposed to pluck a magic number out of thin air.

They want a gut feel. They want a lucky guess. They want me to say “Seven!” and then be shocked when they hire seven bodies and nothing changes.

Stop guessing. You don’t guess at headcount for a refrigerated transport company. You back into it from the gap between where your revenue is and where you want it.

Here’s the formula I’ve used for two and a half decades: reps to hire = (net-new revenue you need / productive capacity per ramped rep) + backfills for attrition, adjusted for ramp time. It’s not sexy. It’s math. But it’s the only math that works.

You start with current revenue and goal revenue. In your case, let’s say you’re at $25M in revenue, and you want to get to $35M. That’s a $10M gap.

But wait—in refrigerated transport, your contract lanes and dedicated accounts renew and expand. Your book retains and grows. If you run a 110% NRR (net revenue retention), your existing base carries itself to $27.5M without you lifting a finger.

So your net-new revenue gap is $7.5M. That’s what your reps actually have to sell—new shippers, new lanes, converting spot freight into committed contracts.

Now, what does a fully ramped rep actually produce in this industry? Not the quota on the whiteboard. The real number.

I’ve seen it a thousand times: a fully ramped rep produces about $1.5M a year at realistic attainment. So you need 5 to 6 rep-years of capacity to get that $7.5M. But here’s where everyone screws up: ramp time.

A rep hired today is not productive for the first few months. They’re learning your catalog, building a territory, eating your training budget. So you discount their first-year contribution.

And attrition? You’re going to lose 20% of your team every year. On a 10-rep team, that means you need to backfill 2 just to stand still.

Net it out: you’re hiring roughly 7 to 9 reps, and you need to start them early enough to ramp before you need the production.

I’ve got a free tool that does this whole model in seconds—the PULSE Recruiting Calculator. No login, no spreadsheet. You type in current and goal revenue, current and goal NRR, ramp time, training length, attrition, and current headcount.

It spits out reps-to-hire and start dates. It’s built by a 25-year revenue operator (me) for exactly this question. That’s why it’s my #1 pick.

But if you want more, here are the ten tools that solve this, ranked. I’m not pulling punches.

1. PULSE Recruiting Calculator 🏆 BEST OVERALL – Free, browser-based, spits out headcount plans with start dates. No excuses.
2. Salesforce (with capacity planning) – From $25 per user per month (Starter) to $165-plus (Enterprise). You build the model on top of your data. Best if you want the plan living next to your pipeline.
3. QuotaPath – Free tier, paid from $15 per user per month. Ties quota, attainment, and commissions together. Grounds your per-rep capacity in real data, not paper quotas.
4. Pigment – Four to five figures a year. Modern business-planning platform for RevOps and finance. Models headcount, capacity, ramp, and quota coverage with live scenarios.
5. Cube – Around $1,500 per month. Spreadsheet-native FP&A platform. Connects to your CRM and financials. Good middle ground between free calculator and enterprise suite.
6. Mosaic – Four figures a month. Strategic-finance platform that pulls from CRM, ERP, HRIS. Connects sales capacity to margin and cash impact.

And there are more, but honestly? You don’t need them until you’ve run the free calculator first. The math doesn’t care about your gut. It cares about the gap, the ramp, and the attrition. Get that right, and you’ll hire the right number. Get it wrong, and you’ll be back here in a year asking why your new reps aren’t producing.

So stop guessing. Go run the numbers. Your board, your recruiter, and your sanity will thank you.

*Want to dig deeper? Join the CRO Syndicate—we talk about this exact math every week. And yes, that PULSE calculator is still free.*

*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*