The Freight Doctor

The relationship you have with your freight carrier works exactly the same way as with any relationship.

 Here are a couple signs that your “freight-honeymoon” is either over or coming to a halt:

[* On a side note: if your freight carrier provides services other than parcel deliveries, more than likely, their business is not flourishing with the "parcel" side of the business. The most profitable part of freight business comes from heavy freight that fills docks and are considered rush deliveries.]

Wouldn’t you like to have the customer care that provides you with the same level of service while remaining courteous, friendly and thoroughly professional at all times? And you know that you are dealing with a dependable carrier that is willing to move the “smaller orders” as they are in moving the larger freight orders. There are many ways to either keep up with that “attention filled honeymoon stage.”

In the next part of this article, I will talk about how to keep the business relationship with your freight carrier on its toes.
 
-The Freight Doctor

http://www.thefreightdoctor.com

 During my time in the freight and shipping industry, one of the biggest mistakes that continually popped up from company to company was complacency. What I mean by that is: a lot of traffic managers would find one freight carrier they were comfortable with and ship almost exclusively through them. Even if you’re getting good pricing from only one carrier, this is a big mistake. Never depend on one carrier for all your shipping needs. If you have more than one carrier then you can play them against one another — when you get better FAK and accessorial charges from one, send that pricing to the others and watch them fight for the business. If you’re relying on only one carrier then you will be left to their tender mercies. And that is not a good thing.

If you sign up with a union carrier, make sure to find out when their union contract is going to expire. The last thing in the world you want to deal with is having your merchandise stuck on a trailer for 4-5 weeks or more while you wait for a potential strike to finish. The last union strike was in 1994 and before that in the early 1970s when the teamsters were locked out for 12 weeks!

If your company is involved in trade shows and conventions, then you’re going to need to sign up with a union carrier. There’s really no way around that. Yellow and ABF are the primary carriers that ship to and from the various trade shows in the US.

When selecting your carriers you should be considering all requirements needed for your shipments…this includes any shipments coming in to you on a collect basis. Some of the questions you should be asking yourself and potential carriers are:
• Is my carrier delivering my product within the transit times shown on the website?
• Are my rates being corrected or are they different from the rates I pull off the carrier’s website?
• What kind of shape is my product in when it arrives to my customer’s location?
• Does the carrier perform better in specific regions or are they good throughout the entire US?

Depending upon the size of your company and number of shipments, the time spent on preparing and then tracking orders can be monumental. One of the things I’ll talk about next is how to put properly put your shipping and traffic department together to maximize the money you’re spending on it.

That should do it for today, though.

-The Freight Doctor
http://www.thefreightdoctor.com