RELATIONSHIPS MATTER Although the terms “shipper of
choice” and “carrier of choice” have been in vogue for years, they took on deeper meaning during the pandemic. Relationships that matter aren’t based on knowing someone’s name or their favorite football team but counting on each other when it matters. If you waited until your company was in a capacity crunch to build relationships with carriers, it was too little, too late. “When every carrier has more business than they can handle, a shipper becomes a glass of water in the ocean,” says Lonny Holston, export operations coordinator for Mickey, a digital platform for commodity transactions. “Hopefully, shippers had been cultivating their relationships with carriers before the pandemic.” While cost is always a factor, the criteria that PFS, an Allen, Texas- based e-commerce ful llment provider, considers when selecting carriers has changed since the pandemic. “Cost and service are going to be important, but we’ve come to value the ability to be predictable and reliable,” says Tracey Mewborn, corporate traf c manager for PFS. PFS manages logistics for its customers in both inbound and outbound lanes, handling truckload moves and direct-to- consumer deliveries. “During periods of crisis, when we’re asked to deliver a miracle on behalf of our clients, we lean on personal relationships with our carrier partners,” says Patrick Lowe, area vice president of business management for PFS. “We need the same agility and responsiveness from them that we’re being asked to provide. It does us no good to pick, pack, and ship the orders if they can’t get put into the network.” Shippers look to build relationships just as much as carriers do to ensure capacity availability and ef ciency. Logistics provider Schneider connects shippers and carriers to develop more capacity options through technology. Despite the growth of transactional
Building strong relationships with carrier partners starts with respecting drivers— establishing personal communication, expediting loading and unloading of freight, and streamlining proof-of-delivery paperwork.
requires onerous paperwork for proof of delivery may nd themselves in a capacity shortage. “The most precious asset in the whole ecosystem is the professional driver,” says Van Zeeland. “We need to ensure that we are ef cient with the driver’s time and that we respect the job that the driver is doing so that we make it worth it for that professional to stay employed in this industry.” Schneider uses scorecards where drivers can rate shippers’ locations; it then shares that information with the shippers. “Drivers rate shippers like you’d rate a restaurant,” Van Zeeland says. “The drivers vote with their decision to accept a dispatch and an offer from a customer location that may or may not be doing the right things for the driver. “You can clearly see when a shipper is not valuing a driver’s time, and we can show shippers how long their freight waits to get a driver involved,” she adds. PFS encourages its local managers to meet with drivers face-to-face at the loading dock. “While technology helps us nd resources, nothing beats personal communication for building relationships,” Mewborn says. Echo Global Logistics uses data from geofencing and other sources to monitor shipper performance and set expectations with trucking companies. “The last thing we want to do is send
freight tech companies and apps, shippers still look for carriers they can count on. “Shippers may work with a lot of different carriers, but they absolutely prefer to work with a few carriers that can give them a lot of options and are really in it with them,” says Erin Van Zeeland, senior vice president and general manager of logistics services at Schneider in Green Bay, Wisconsin. To some extent, good relationships can be quanti ed. Echo Global Logistics, a Chicago-based third- party logistics provider, tracks shipper performance across various factors such as how often the freight is ready when the shipper says it will be ready, and how long drivers spend waiting to load and unload. “We operate based on the data we gather from shippers, and those are the things carriers care about in terms of reliability,” says Jay Gustafson, Echo’s senior vice president of marketplace solutions. RESPECT THE DRIVER Shippers who want to build better relationships can start with respecting drivers. Given the ongoing driver shortage and capacity crunch, making life more ef cient for drivers goes a long way. Drivers have long memories and talk to each other, so a shipper that makes drivers wait for a load or
206 Inbound Logistics • January 2022
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