<p>This research develops a decentralized shipment consolidation mechanism as an alternative to traditional, private third-party services. The core novelty is the use of public information regarding available shipments and the recognition that in freight transport, the shipment is the critical resource, unlike ridesharing, where the driver is critical. This approach “flips” the ridesharing model, making the carrier the price taker. The mechanism evaluates two cost allocation methods among shipments: Shapley and proportional. In the short term, when a fixed set of shipments has to be consolidated, the Shapley cost allocation is the most equitable for allocating cost to each shipment that closely matches its impact on the overall cost of the consolidated load. However, the proportional scheme promotes long-term efficiency by incentivizing greater overall consolidation. Comparing the public mechanism to a centralized firm, a single firm operating a private fleet can achieve a total cost reduction of up to 30% due to the tacit shipment information that is not available to the public mechanism. Crucially, the paper shows that in a more realistic multi-firm market (e.g., six firms controlling the market), the public consolidation mechanism achieves a lower total consolidation cost (approximately 10% less than the multi-firm private scenario), proving its practical efficiency advantage in a competitive market structure.</p>