Inbound Logistics | September 2025

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11 Proven Ways to Collaborate With Your Transportation Partner Transactional relationships are a thing of the past—collaboration is the only way to succeed in today’s volatile supply chain. 1 BUILD TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY.

9 COLLABORATE ON TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVES. Share your expectations and priorities for technology solutions—automation, AI tools, and visibility platforms. Offer feedback on technology pilots to ensure solutions align with your team’s workow. Be willing to experiment with new tools that could improve efciency or customer service. 10 PLAN FOR DISRUPTION TOGETHER. Disruptions like weather, strikes, or capacity shortages are inevitable, so develop contingency plans with your provider before they happen. Dene escalation paths, backup carriers, and alternate modes to ensure quick response, and review outcomes after each event to strengthen future resilience. 11 JOIN ADVISORY PANELS & WORKING GROUPS. Join your partner’s customer advisory councils to exchange insights and inuence service development. Share your industry challenges and ideas for improvement in these forums. Use these panels to strengthen relationships, gain visibility into trends, and help shape future solutions. Successful collaboration requires shared goals, transparency, clear success metrics, ongoing engagement, and commitment to maximize value and achieve business objectives.

best practices they share—even if they don’t tie directly to moving a load. Use your transportation partner’s knowledge to uncover ways to reduce costs, improve service, and strengthen your supply chain. 5 PARTICIPATE IN REGULAR SERVICE REVIEWS. Schedule monthly or quarterly service review meetings to evaluate on-time performance, exceptions, and root causes of failures. Use these sessions to agree on corrective actions before problems escalate. Contribute ideas for joint improvement, not just reactive xes. 6 INVOLVE STAKEHOLDERS IN ONBOARDING. Ensure everyone who interacts with your freight—from logistics managers to dock supervisors—is part of onboarding discussions. Set clear expectations and review operational details upfront. Acknowledge early missteps can happen and work with your provider to plan for them. 7 DEFINE AND ALIGN ON KPI. Clarify exactly how you dene KPIs like on-time pickup, on-time delivery, or tender acceptance. Ensure your denitions match your reporting and performance monitoring process. Provide feedback if the data is unclear or not presented in a helpful way. 8 TURN DATA INTO ACTION. Request that performance reports be shared in formats that make them easy to interpret and act upon. Encourage providers to highlight trends, root causes, and recommended actions—not just raw numbers. Discuss how to use data to inform both day-to-day operations and long-term strategies.

Communicate your growth goals, cost- reduction targets, and long-term priorities with your transportation partner. Help your logistics providers understand whether your industry’s competitive marketplace is expanding or contracting so they can tailor solutions accordingly. Position the relationship as a strategic partnership rather than a transactional vendor arrangement. 2 COMMUNICATE OPENLY AND HONESTLY. Be open about your operational challenges, performance expectations, and strategic focus areas. Share critical business information that will help your partner deliver solutions that actually move the needle. Remember: the best results come from working with fewer, better partners—not more vendors. 3 RECOGNIZE CREDIBLE PARTNERS. Look for signs they’ve researched not only your business but also your industry in depth. A credible partner should understand sector-specic challenges— whether it’s retail peak season volatility or automotive just-in-time delivery pressures. Share detailed information to help them tailor solutions to your unique context, and invite well-prepared, industry-savvy partners into deeper conversations sooner. Ensure your partners have an active, effective carrier vetting and screening program to manage cargo safely and securely. 4 LOOK FOR VALUE BEYOND FREIGHT. Let your provider know your customers’ needs, not just your own, so they can help you better serve your market. Welcome relevant industry articles, insights, and

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18 Inbound Logistics • September 2025