As a business that relies on shipping to get your goods and products for distribution and, ultimately, customers, having a consistent supply of trucking support is critical. Whether it’s moving your goods to the train connection for cross-country pallet deliveries or handling regional distribution to mid-point suppliers, products need to be trucked. Hands down, American trucking reaches more retail points and markets than any other type of logistics, and it’s growing. As a result, having a dependable connection for shipping when your business needs it and on scale is essential to your revenue success.
Partnering with a freight broker cuts out all the energy, time and money lost setting up each shipment. Instead, your business can focus on production and selling, and your partnership can streamline your distribution to the most efficient movement possible.
Why Partnering Produces Business Advantages
Most freight shipping today is not a top-down affair. It involves a combination of players, some of which are regional, some are mid-point connectors, and some are national. How one maps out their shipping can either involve a complex string of contracted parties for a shipment to happen, or it can be buried in an expensive contract provided by one player and subcontracted to others in the details. However, there’s no need to lose money or time struggling to make sense of connections. Instead, using a freight broker puts shipping expertise on the business side as well as finding the most efficient path for a shipment, which changes regularly.
Obvious Advantages
The most obvious benefits are avoiding spending an incredible amount of time and the opportunity cost of reinventing the wheel. With a freight broker, you partner with an expert who already has all the key shipping connections and market knowledge. They know what shippers are available when and with which resources that best match a business’ goods ready for transport. The broker also knows how to most efficiently connect the different players for the most efficient shipment path. It saves money, and time and avoids big mistakes in choosing the wrong shipping player.
Added Value With Each Order
Freight brokers also give a business incredible flexibility from one shipment to the next. One order might need a fast shipper, yet the next may need a schedule of smaller shipments on a slower schedule. Not all market players can handle varying orders. Instead, many like their order types to be the same. That forces businesses to accommodate or run shipments late. Instead, with a broker, a business can get exactly the type and scale needed for the order at that time. And it can change on the next order without commitment loss.
Expertise Breaks Down Ambiguity Barriers
Industry expertise continues to be a big delivery with broker partnering as well. It takes years and relationships to build up networks with shippers and various supply system elements. That includes distributors, wholesalers, and train system connections as well. Instead of trying to build everything all over again, a business partner with a freight broker can achieve all the same immediately, leveraging already-existing networks and relationships via the broker. It provides far greater efficiency and accurate response to a market need versus guessing blind in logistics for the first time.
Managing truckload shipping services, multiple routes, partners, and connection points can be extremely complicated without background and up-to-date market details on rates, schedules, scales of operation, and carrier types. Brokers have all of this at their fingertips and stay on top of the Rubik’s Cube of shipping so clients don’t have to deal with a sharp learning curve themselves. That simplicity allows a business to focus on manufacturing and readying orders for shipment. The logistics side is handled by the broker and suppliers as needed. Things run smoother, faster, and easier than if it was all one vertical system with tremendous layover and waste in waiting.
Don’t Lose Time Guessing
Logistics is not rocket science, but it can feel like the same to an outsider. 3PL systems, truck-to-train and vice versa, consolidators and more can quickly blur into a big confusing mess. A freight broker partnership solves this risk before it gets started. Your business enjoys convenient shipping support, and your customers receive your products on time consistently. That’s how things should work all the time.