3 Tips to Optimize Your Truckload Shipping Strategy

When it comes to shipping, one size does not fit all — and how you approach your strategy can impact your overall profit margin.

Online shoppers increasingly expect shipping to be free. You know it’s not. Because many companies today compete directly on price, you simply cannot overspend on shipping.

It’s why transportation optimization is crucial. Overpaying on shipping charges is a direct hit to your bottom line. You can protect more of that bottom line by paying careful attention to your modes, routes, carriers, and distribution strategies. Have you selected the most cost-effective approaches?

In this blog post, we’ll discuss three tips to help you optimize your shipping, including:

1. Shipment timing

2. Teamwork

3. Creating a culture of optimization

1. Time-management pushed to the road

Timing is everything, and, in your case, increased lead times cut costs. The more time you give logistics partners to book a shipment, the more leverage there is to find the best carrier and equipment.

Your truckload shipping needs are a bigger piece of a massive logistics puzzle. Longer lead times allow for deeper efficiencies. Carriers incur big costs for idle trailers. When you plan ahead for pick-up, staging, and loading, your carriers are able to lower idle time. This results in lower costs for them, which they pass on as savings to you.

Wasted or idle time adds up, and a nibble becomes a big bite in your profits. A vendor who is not prepared for a pickup starts a chain reaction that ends up delaying carriers. You pay for the time they sit and wait. That’s why a freight management logistics system or partnering with a transportation/logistics advisor should be considered as an investment, rather than an expense.

One area where a logistics service adviser can help is to negotiate backhaul credits or lower rates. That truck has to get to the next pick-up destination or back to its home base. Why should that trip be without a load? If your shipment aligns with a backhaul route, you may be able to ship it at lower rates.

Explore the opposite end of the timing spectrum, as well. Can you take advantage of drop trailers? It takes the pressure offloading and allows you to combine shipments that otherwise might have been sent LTL. Drivers don’t sit waiting for their truck to be loaded, which is the waiting time you pay for. Drop trailers also reward you with more flexibility for your warehouse and dock scheduling.

2. The logistics of teamwork

Getting creative with efficiency is a cost-saver, but it requires logistical horsepower — which again shines a light on the ROI you’ll get by investing in experts who can advise you on transportation logistics. There are third-party logistics companies that have the ability, for example, to leverage tens of thousands of shippers and carriers to create pooled shipments. Your shipment is combined with other deliveries to knock down transportation costs. Capacity issues are reduced, as are damage risks.

You can reach a nearly perfect shipping scenario when you seek out continuous move solutions, where your shipment is one of the multiple shipments added to a single carrier route. Deadheading miles — which you ultimately pay for — are decreased, which makes your truckloads more attractive to carriers.

3. Encourage a culture of optimization

Often, some of the best ideas for cost-savings come from those who are further away from management and much closer to the shipping process itself. Consider creating opportunities for people at all levels of your operation to offer insight and suggestions on how to optimize shipping. For example, you might find that your customer service center has insight on customer expectations for shipping options that can be adopted at a lower cost. What does your fulfillment department have to say about operational slowdowns? You can’t ship what they haven’t prepared.

Here’s a question for you: Can you name each and every step involved from the time a customer makes a purchase to the time it’s delivered? Sometimes, all it takes is for one of these to be out of phase to create a costly domino effect. The process may not be complicated, but it can be complex — and it’s why investing in a transportation optimization software platform can be the most effective way to improve your shipping strategy.

These platforms track everything. You have historical data that allows you to use predictive analytics to make proactive decisions that will save you money, and all your transportation data is in one place, giving you end-to-end visibility of your supply chain. This data can help you find efficiencies that save time and reduce your transportation spending.

But be prepared: The software isn’t the solution. You’ll have to implement it, and then you’ll have to get your organization to adhere to the tactics. That’s why it makes sense to work with an organization that can assist with integrating transportation management software solutions and advises you on implementation best practices.

Looking for a way to benchmark where you are and where your truckload shipping strategy needs to get you? Learn more about how we can help.