obscured the true, comprehensive cost of their solutions. For instance, some glossed over additional fees that would come into play, such as appointment and lift gate fees, Maltbie says. Some didn’t understand the class and weight of the products BBQGrills.com offers—grills can span more than seven feet, and some products weigh several hundred pounds. “Everybody looks at saving money, but that’s not the focal point,” Maltbie says. While few successful business owners would decline the opportunity to save $10 or $20 on a shipment, spending inordinate amounts of time on administrative functions can negate any nancial savings. “Spending time over money is not bene cial,” he says. Maltbie has focused on using both time and money ef ciently. Coyote Logistics has also taken this approach to heart, and helped BBQGrills.com on multiple fronts. Coyote Logistics serves a network of more than 15,000 shippers and 70,000 carriers, says David Graziano, business development representative with the company, whose U.S. headquarters is in Chicago. Coyote works with customers of all sizes, with smaller businesses being a key customer segment. Its clients span multiple industries, including retail, automotive, and healthcare. LINKED ON LINKEDIN Graziano initially reached out to Maltbie through mutual LinkedIn connections, guring “BBQGrills.com’s growing business would be a great t for the Coyote network,” he says. Once the opportunity arose to move some freight for BBQGrills.com, the Coyote team “showed Maltbie that we could offer superior service and technology at a comparable—if not better—cost” than it had previously been paying, Graziano says. By turning to Coyote to handle LTL shipments, Maltbie was able to cut the time he and his team spent on shipping activities and direct their efforts to higher- priority actions. At the same time, shipping costs dropped. Coyote’s capabilities and understanding of BBQGrill.com’s transportation needs impressed Maltbie enough that he decided to shift the company’s LTL shipping
C A S E B O O K S T U DY The Grill of it All THE CHALLENGE:
BBQGrills.com, a rapidly growing company, needed to find a logistics provider that offered less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping services across the United States. The provider also had to offer quality customer service, and in-depth transportation expertise, and be able to handle time-consuming logistics tasks, such as completing bills of lading.
THE SOLUTION: Partner with Coyote Logistics, a global third-party logistics provider.
THE RESULTS: Damaged freight claims dropped by more than three-quarters, and shipping costs dropped by more than one-third. NEXT STEPS: Continue to work with Coyote Logistics as sales growth at BBQGrills.com continues.
BBQGrills.com is a small, rapidly growing business specializing in premium BBQ grills and outdoor kitchen equipment. They ship from their network of five U.S. warehouses, as well as direct frommanufacturers. Most freight is e-commerce, shipped direct-to-consumer via LTL.
business of BBQGrills.com so it “could be consultative about carrier selection, loading, scheduling and pricing, among other factors,” Maltbie adds. One feature Maltbie says he most appreciates is Coyote’s backend portal communication, which shows daily shipments and orders lled, among other information. In addition, Coyote began handling bills of lading for BBQGrills.com. The company had been doing them in-house— “an incredibly tedious and time-consuming
business to them. Since then, Coyote has been “critical to effectively ful ll our growing number of customer orders,” Maltbie says. Once the two companies decided to work together, Coyote was up and running within a couple of days. Within the rst few weeks, Coyote onboarded the operations team to help support increasing sales volume. “It was very much a collaborative effort,” Maltbie says. Coyote used the onboarding process to learn as much as it could about the
266 Inbound Logistics • January 2022
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