Provide clients with pragmatic transportation strategies grounded with real world experience that are implementable, not just theoretical, utilizing my 40 years as a transportation professional with shippers, motor carriers, NVOCC, public warehouse, and a domestic freight forwarder.
Part of my mission is to educate shipper clients that there is more to transportation than the rates you negotiate, regardless of the mode type. Points that I will be stressing:
- Total delivered cost is what shippers should be looking at, not just rates.
- The proper role of bids/RFP’s. Every lane should not be bid yearly. Every shipper has a segment of lanes that lends itself to bidding, not the entire network.
- Mode conversion to intermodal, rail box car, pool distribution, and Trans Loading.
- Managing inbound transportation (commodities, packaging, ingredients, MRO, etc.).
- If you don’t manage an inbound lane, at the very least ensure the rate the supplier is paying is reasonable.
- Transportation capacity planning, seasonal shipping strategies, and spot market rate understanding.
- Proper definition of on time delivery measures for all the participants, transportation, customer service, sales, carrier, and customer.
- Metrics are you and your carriers aligned on the right aspects of the business to measure.
- Impact to cost and service of Federal and State regulations.
- The power of benchmarking rates versus the market and what other shippers are paying.
- Becoming a preferred or strategic shipper with specific carriers.
- Strategic and Smart outsourcing.
- Understanding the overall cost and customer perception of refusals and returns.
- In new site selection analysis, ensuring that the total cost and service implications of transportation are properly analyzed.
- Educating internal and external stake holders on market conditions impacting cost and service.
- Don’t lose sight of the customer by being internally focused. Transportation is all about the external.
- Transportation strategy and technology, shippers need a short, medium, and long term view.