Deploying some standard practices for a healthy carrier blend mix ensures the prevention of losses and increases effectiveness. The resulting flexibility eventually helps keep your ship sailing and fulfils customer demands. All while better streamlining your shipping operations and offering a single pane of glass view for all stakeholders.
Where to start – current stats first
Recognize your strengths
One carrier may specialize in deliveries in buzzing urban areas, another may be diligent with delivery timings, and yet others may be good at cross-borders. By playing to the strengths of your carriers, you’ll make more transparent and meaningful relationships.
Quantify everything
Carrier performance directly influences client experience and satisfaction. They’re the most crucial step in the delivery. So track delays, missing documents or late payments, and any markers that show declining performance.
Scoreboards let businesses gauge outputs between carriers, spot gaps early on, and know when to chalk out their carrier list again. Establishing KPIs will give you a higher ground while optimizing your carrier mix and acting accordingly.
Establish sound communication
Meet with your carriers regularly and appreciate their strengths, highlight issues, and plan out future needs. Their on-ground knowledge is pivotal to increasing output and competitiveness.
Software
Functioning on a smart logistics platform will increase communication between your carriers, wholesalers, and retailers. A platform like TruKKer keeps information handy and available on demand. So that stakeholders can preempt any surge or deal with contingencies in a better way.
What to expect from the mix
Here is what you could expect from a healthy carrier mix
Long-term relationships
No matter how tight-knit you and your carriers are, any friction in either operation can cause a decline in your understanding. On the other hand, maintaining these connections is a bit trickier.
Partnering with TruKKer can save the day. Having an entire dedicated team at your service to help automate or streamline your carrier deployment saves you crucial time.
Real-Time Visibility
By mixing the capacity and deploying carriers in real-time, you will always know where and when you have extra supply. Now you can quickly fix your inventory or sourcing hiccups, dispatch resources more readily, and more. You can also use this real-time information to snap up deliveries through load boards.
Capacity depth
Maximum shippers have endured a situation in which their volume suddenly increases on a given lane. And their FTL carriers fall short of meeting this higher demand. For perishable goods, shippers had to run into this a lot, especially during the pandemic.
Some volume shippers dabble in the notion that national carriers can only handle their FTL demands. But by drilling down to a regional level, you will find further optimization opportunities. This is particularly those available in many crucial lanes where public carriers are willing to go. Note that this is frequently only at added cost. They can effectively manage loads without driving add-on costs for deadheading or non-compliance.