Moving your products does not need to be a frightening prospect. You just need to work with companies that know what they are doing.
It really does not matter what type of company you meet with, the question as to how you would source their freight always comes up.
Freight impacts all companies, the challenge is to understand the not so upfront costs and where they?re embedded. Whether you are shipping directly to your customer?s distribution centers with your own fleet, using a 3PL or just sourcing your freight lanes, the issues impacting the cost of freight are the same. If you understand how to unbundle them you will have a much better chance of controlling these costs going forward. It is not as simple as the price of diesel is rising and as a result so is the cost of moving freight.? However following trends does offer some insight as to what the industry is doing in general.
A site that I visit regularly is DAT? TransCore? Trendlines. This site which is updated all of the time that allows you to follow periodic Freight Rates, Fuel and Credit Trends. This at least allows you to measure your contract rates and the escalators and de-escalators associated with them versus up to date industry data relative to the long term and spot market capacity for flatbeds, refers, vans etc. Armed with this information which you can link to your procurement dashboard you can begin to decipher where your costs are relative to the rest of the industry and how to break them out in order to drive your costs down.
Just remember that the more you know the better you can negotiate. If you?re interested in sourcing your transportation rates, please reach out to a customer services representative at SafeSourcing.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
