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Are You A Shipper of Choice?

If you want to be the shipper of choice, here are a few questions and suggestions that you should be considering:

How is your Facility?
Are drivers eager to come to your facility? As truck capacity continues to tighten and driver shortages continue to grow, shippers must work harder to entice the drivers to their facility.

Facility details to ask yourself:

If the driver is out of hours, do you have a place they can park?
Is your facility equipped with a scale?
Do you have enough loading equipment and bays to accommodate the amount of freight that you are shipping?
Is it possible to extend your shipping/receiving hours?
Can the driver drop their trailer and come back instead of just waiting?
Is your facility easy to reach?
- Changing your location may not be feasible but changing how a driver accesses your lot might be an option.
Is there room for the driver to maneuver their truck or do you have things stored on the lot that should be moved elsewhere?
Have you talked to your carriers about their ease of access?

Make your business a first-class facility that you can be proud of and that carriers want to visit.

Additional ideas: Go a step above the rest; have free coffee available, give them access to free WIFI, have a carrier appreciation day. Treat your carriers with respect and they will be eager to come to your facility.

Drivers:

Are you ready for the driver when they arrive or are you making them wait? Every minute counts towards the driver’s hours of service and with the implementation of the Electronic Logging Device (ELD), there are no short-cuts.

Driver details to ask yourself:

If there is a wait, are you communicating with the driver how long it will be?
Are you making their wait-time comfortable?
Are there clean restroom facilities for the carrier?
Is there a clean breakroom available with vending machines?

Money:

If there are any types of fees due, do you expect the driver to pay them?
Why not invoice the customer instead of expecting payment from the driver?
Treat your carriers fairly at the negotiating table.
Pay your carriers promptly.
A carrier will work harder to find available space for a shipper who negotiates a fair rate and then pays for the service in a timely manner.

Staff:

Be sure to have all your personnel educated company-wide on the importance of the truck driver. Everyone should be treating the drivers with respect, not like they are an inconvenience. Every employee that encounters a driver should greet them and make them feel that they are important, because they are. Without drivers to move your freight, your company isn’t going to stay in business.

Question to ask yourself:

Am I doing everything that I can to be a shipper of choice or do I need to make some improvements?

Contributor: Pamela Leever

About Allyn International

Allyn International is dedicated to providing high quality, customer centric services and solutions for the global marketplace. Allyn's core products include transportation management, logistics sourcing, freight forwarding, supply chain consulting, tax management and global trade compliance. Allyn clients range from small local businesses to Fortune 500 firms. Allyn conducts business in more than 20 languages and has extensive experience in both developed and emerging markets. Highly trained experts are positioned throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. Allyn’s regional headquarters are strategically located in Fort Myers, Florida, U.S.A., Shanghai, P.R. China and Prague, Czech Republic. For more information, visit www.allynintl.com.

References:

https://www.joc.com/trucking-logistics/ltl-shipping/12-steps-becoming-shipper-choice_20180405.html?utm_source=JOC&utm_medium=content&utm__campaign=relatedarticle