The Pitfalls of Micro-managing Your Shipping
Here’s a scenario we can all relate to: You’re trying to book your next flight, balancing a combination of the cheapest fare, the fewest layovers and the most convenient times — over multiple carriers, using several find-a-flight websites. You’ve got browser windows and tabs open everywhere, and nothing’s quite right, except for that one flight that you can no longer find among all the open windows.
Suddenly you’ve lost an hour of your life and end up so frustrated that you make a snap decision that’s not the most convenient and may not even be the best price.
Sadly, many companies are doing the same thing with their shipping services. But instead of it costing them a little more money and a little inconvenience one time, they’re making this mistake every day or every week, potentially hurting their business’s bottom line.
It seems you’re left with two choices:
1. Spend a lot of your — or one of your employee’s — time familiarizing yourself and keeping abreast with the ins and outs of every available carrier. And then every shipment, and every invoice, and every due date, and, heaven forbid, every claim.
2. Choosing a single service for convenience and expedience, at the cost of missing out on the best rates that may be available from another shipper.
And, in either case, the burden falls on you to ensure the product goes out the door and gets to the customer on schedule. And the burden falls on you to file a claim in the event it doesn't show up. And the burden falls on — guess who — you to find warehouse space to store your product, in the event that a delivery is delayed. (Let’s not even talk about the worst scenarios, or you may not ever sleep again.)
So, neither sounds like a good plan, right?
Luckily, there’s a third option:
● Let a shipping and logistics specialist do the work for you.
Outsourcing your shipping needs to a third-party expert removes the hassle of constant comparison shopping for shipping services and the fear of missing out on the best rates available. And such a provider makes sense for almost any scale business.
Small- and medium-sized companies can effectively outsource their entire shipping departments, freeing up coveted staffing hours for work that more directly drives business and saving money to boot. Large companies can reduce full-time-equivalent staffing from shipping departments, too, and the shipping savings over the course of a year can make an astounding change in their bottom lines.
Shipping and logistics pros, like MJ Rost Logistics, are well-versed at tracking the best rates with every potential carrier. Even if you did your due diligence and checked with all available carriers, you often can’t match a shipping pro’s rates. Their long-term contracts and the high-volume shipping rates they get from carriers give them lower prices. They’re in the business of getting their customers the best rates on shipping. And it’s worth noting that a reputable company like MJ Rost does this “fee free,” with the service cost already calculated in your freight rate.
A third-party shipping pro can also let you easily scale up your business without concerns about handling added orders.
And if your business has unusual needs — like staging equipment and furniture for the opening of a restaurant, which might require dozens of deliveries from many suppliers that all need to arrive at roughly the same time — a third-party specialist can offer turnkey service, dealing with all the moving parts and last-minute changes. They can make you look like a hero — you never even have to break a sweat — and give you a net savings thanks to their high-volume discounted shipping rates.
If you’ve got questions about how using a third-party shipping and logistics pro like MJ Rost can help you save time, sanity, and, perhaps best of all, money, feel free to get in touch with us today. We’d love to have a no-pressure, no-obligation chat to help you understand. solutions@mjrost.com 800-283-7678 or chat with us at www.mjrost.com