If you're a mid sized or large sized shipper (or even if you have regular LTL) you're probably going to run into the issue of having to reexamine your freight costs or reexamine your whole operating procedure to find out how to lower your logistics costs. Blasting hundreds of carriers or brokers on an email list or haggling over service requirements or price with one specific carrier or broker is a daunting task and doesn't lend well to long term cost controls or securing capacity in the spot market...and it also costs you and your logistics staff or purchasing team lots of time.
The Spot Market Controls You - Not The Other Way Around...
If you think that you're in control of your spot market rates or have anyway of truly aggregating your quotes together so there is real transparency through the old methods of phone and email you're just plain wrong. You're either paying too much (in most cases with most mid-sized shippers especially) or you're paying too little and because of this you're missing purchase order delivery windows and your whole supply chain is starting to suffer because of failed pick ups or broken promises by your limited pool of contacts for spot freight. You can stop the madness. Automating spot market RFPs (requests for pricing) or RFQs (requests for quotes) can help save you a ton of headache.
Marketplace freight models work by helping you get real, asset based carriers and/or real logistics companies who have much better control and access to the available spot market capacity than you have immediately available through your network. In fact even if you are partnered with a large freight broker, chances are they aren't leveraging technology in the optimal ways to maximize your purchasing power in the spot market on every load.
Cut out the noise. Get Real Offers From Real Available Capacity.
Finding trucking capacity is only getting tougher. If you know your ship date and you know how big that load is going to be then you're about 90% of the way to finding a truck to pick it up if you're using transparent marketplace methodology. Once you receive bids or quotes and these companies are allowed to counter offer in real time, without anyone on your team having to step in and get involved in the mess, the friction immediately starts to dissipate. Now you have mined the best possible options from qualified carriers, automatically. Chose the option you like best, send the rate confirmation and you're done.
Post is written by Steve Kochan, Founder and CEO of ComFreight.com.
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