A common dilemma for businesses is deciding the appropriate shipping mode to use for their important shipments. Shipping mode choices include LTL freight, small package, ground, air, ocean, rail, intermodal, and others. When deciding whether to use a small package or LTL freight carrier, for example, shippers must take into consideration the weight and characteristics of the shipment, including delivery urgency. The old —150-pound' rule is not an absolute guideline anymore, but obviously the weight of the shipment must be a major consideration in choosing a shipping mode.

Shipment Characteristics

The size, weight, and shape of the materials you are shipping can also impact your decision making. Are your boxes big and bulky, small and compact, unitized or loose? LTL often is a preferable choice when the shipment's boxes are oddly shaped, as in furniture. LTL is also the way to go when your shipment is palletized, as small package carriers only handle individual boxes. Being less automated than the small package shippers, the LTL carrier will often use forklifts instead of conveyor belts. Strange as it may seem, moving odd-shaped boxes and pallets with a forklift produces fewer damages than moving them on a conveyor belt with thousands of other packages. The shape of the carton may cause it to fall off the belt or at least be tumbled around a good deal. Also, when you ship multiple loose boxes, the chances of losing one or two them are greater than had you shipped them together on a pallet.

Shipment Destination

Another area to consider is the receiving facilities for the shipment. Is there a dock? Does the shipment need to be delivered to the tenth floor of a building with no freight elevator? Is inside delivery even necessary? LTL freight carriers will generally be better delivering dock-to-dock and business-to-business, while small package carriers are better able to handle inside and residential deliveries.  

Service Needs

Service must also be taken into account. If your shipment must travel 2,000 miles and be delivered the next-day, you're going to have to consider an air express service (unless it's Friday, in which case some ground carriers can use the weekend to get your shipment across the country). Generally, if you don't need your shipment delivered within one or two days, LTL freight is going to be less expensive than small package carriers who have more urgent delivery capabilities built into their systems — particularly as your shipment weight increases. LTL freight may also be a good option for shipments moving less than 500 miles, because you can often get next-day delivery on those distances.  

Pricing and Fees

Of course, the primary consideration is quite often price. Most of you are painfully aware of the charges small package carriers assess for services such as rural delivery, address correction and Saturday delivery. LTL carriers have similar charges as well, especially for inside delivery or delivery to a recipient who has no loading dock. Carriers in both industries continue to charge fuel surcharges, which also have a material effect on your shipping price. On a percentage basis, LTL carriers generally charge higher fuel surcharges (about double that of small package carriers) but, in the end, it's the total price you need to look at, since LTL is often less expense on the —line haul' portion of the invoice.

Loss and Damage Concerns

The risk of loss or damage to your precious shipment is always a concern, regardless of what type of carrier you use.  Small package carriers have a higher loss and damage ratio than LTL carriers, but neither is altogether immune to the issue.  LTL carriers provide the advantage of providing significantly more liability coverage than small package carriers (which are often capped at $100 per package). So a small package carrier will have only $300 worth of liability on that 3 package, 300 pound shipment; whereas, an LTL carrier would provide liability coverage of $750. That's more than double the protection of the small package carrier.

Making the Decision

Sometimes the best course of action is to seek help from transportation professionals (like those at PartnerShip) to help you make the right decision. There is no set formula for the best service-price ratio, but as a general rule of thumb, shipments over 200 pounds that don't require urgent delivery are best handled by LTL carriers. Shipments less than 200 pounds, those that can't be placed on a pallet, or those that require urgent delivery over longer distances, are often best handled by small package carriers.

Interested in learning more?                                             

Let PartnerShip help you to determine when and where you should be using small package and LTL freight carriers. Contact us today.

No matter the package size or shipment mode, it's important to be using the proper techniques for your packaging. Learn how to prevent costly and time-consuming mistakes by downloading our ultimate guide to proper packaging. 

As a 22+ year veteran of the business world, a common challenge I have faced - both individually and collectively - is the dilemma of getting decisions made in a timely manner. That's why the following tips provided in a recent report from Keith Prather at Armada Executive Intelligence really caught my eye.

Keith works with many big and small organizations on planning and strategy, and he often sees executives spending too much time on too many decisions. He suggests that one strategy for faster decision making is to invest less time on so many decisions. To accomplish this seemingly improbably goal, Keith recommends developing some self-imposed guidelines for identifying decisions where you need to be involved but don't need to spend so much time getting ready to decide what to do. He recommends eight potential guidelines across three categories where you can accelerate your decision making process:

Decisions with Less Potential Impact

1. Non-strategic issues - Many business people equate strategic with "long-term" decisions. But in reality, strategic isn't defined by a time horizon. Strategic involves areas having a material impact on the business. If a decision's ultimate outcome and implementation lack real significance or visibility for a business, try to limit how much time you spend on making it.

2. Current alternatives are adequate to meet expectations — It's popular to suggest one key to success is a willingness to purposely change things that appear to be working. That can be true in areas important to a business and its customers/clients. If it's a process or activity that is required but takes place in the background and could work in a variety of acceptable ways, however, it's best to decide quickly and move on without trying to reinvent the entire operation.

3. There's plenty of runway to recover from a poor decision — As more processes, services, and even products become digitized, development and recovery costs from something being slightly off the mark are reduced. In these instances, don't overdesign or over-engineer a decision when there is ample opportunity to introduce, test, diagnose, and correct with minimal downsides.

4. It is likely customers will be indifferent to the options being considered — We've seen too much time wasted at businesses agonizing over service and product enhancements so slight that customers will be hard-pressed to EVER notice the difference. If you have a couple of decent decision options on a product or service feature change that is already low on the list of what's important to customers, it's quick decision time.

Decisions that can be More Standardized

5. Decision policies or guidelines already exist — We've seen the human tendency toward boredom used either directly or indirectly as a motivation for overdramatizing what should be routine decisions. When team members have been focused on a narrow area of the organization for too long, even minor decisions can seem like they could change the world. When you have a policy that's working on routine decisions, let the policy work and invest time on bigger issues that really do have some potential for impact.

6. You have a reasonable track record from which to decide — Even where there's a general track record on the results a decision you're considering may yield, people in the business can be overly invested in arguing for a path that feels comfortable or protects a personal agenda. When you sense this is happening, cut short the debate and go with what your experience suggests is the best course of action.

7. You don't have resources for prolonged exploration — An important variable for decision making (i.e., time, people availability, investment for attractive decisions, etc.) may be constrained. If that's the case, forego the intellectual attractiveness of giving a decision everything the business has; it's simply not practical. If this is your situation, shift to eliminating options that aren't viable and quickly get to what you CAN decide to do and implement.

No-Win Decisions

8. You've got no chance of selling in a preferred alternative — Hope springs eternal, but perhaps you find yourself having already unsuccessfully made your best case to sell an internal or external customer on a decision you think they should make. At some point, when you know the customer isn't going to decide in your favor, but still won't say —No,' it can be in your own best interests to say it yourself. With a firm decline, you can free yourself to move on to fight for a different decision on another day.

So what do you do to speed decisions in your organization?

Adopting decision guidelines that make sense for your business and reflect your decision style and pressure points can be a big time saver. The key is to do your thinking upfront (and to continue adding to this list) so you can easily recognize situations where taking more time to get ready to decide is simply not a good investment of resources.

When it comes to making decisions on transportation - whether determining shipping mode, carrier selection, prepaid or collect, or to ship to a tradeshow using a decorator or 3PL - don't waste too much time when PartnerShip is here to help!

This post was supported with business intelligence from Armada Executive Intelligence. Visit their website or follow them on Twitter at @ArmadaCorpIntel. And if 8 decision-making guidelines are too many, check out this article on 7 decision-making situations from the folks at Brainzooming.com!

As a general rule of thumb, one big order ships for less than three smaller orders. That means consolidating multiple orders into a single shipment whenever possible, and always striving to minimize the number of packages you send. All too often, shipments are arranged as they come in from sales or order processing. However, a little planning and visibility goes along ways towards shipping savings.

As the example below shows, one 30 pound small package shipped via FedEx produces a 27% expense reduction over shipping two separate small packages, netting almost $6 in savings.

When it comes to small package shipping, these savings - although seemingly small at times - definitely add up over time. However, when you consolidate LTL freight shipments, the savings become immediately more impressive. As the example below shows, by consolidating three 300 pound shipments into one 900 pound freight shipment, the shippers was able to save 25% - or $454.24 - on their freight shipping expense.

Consolidating orders provides additional benefits to both shippers and receivers (consignees) of small package and LTL freight shipments, including:

• Reduced shipping supply expenses
• Greater fuel efficiency (better on the environment)
• Less time needed to receive, handle, and restock orders

One strategy for shipment consolidation is to create a simple shipping guide that takes into consideration all of your business rules for carriers, weight breaks, orders, and shipping contacts. Distribute this guide to your vendors and discuss it with your customers. A little communication can often go a long way towards small business savings. If you need a partner to help you through the process, you can always call on PartnerShip ... we're here to help.

The editorial staff of Logistics Management (LM) recently unveiled the results of its 29th Annual Quest for Quality Awards. This year, 127 providers of transportation and logistics services have received the ultimate vote of confidence, posting the highest scores across critical service criteria.

For nearly three decades, LM’s Quest for Quality has been regarded in the transportation and logistics industry as the most important measure of customer satisfaction and performance excellence. To determine the best of the best, LM readers rate carriers, third-party logistics (3PL) service providers, and now U.S. port operators strictly on the basis of service quality.

Not surprisingly, many PartnerShip core carriers were among the award winners in this year's contest for the categories outlined below:

• National LTL

• National: Con-way Freight, FedEx Freight

• Multi-Regional: FedEx Freight, Old Dominion

• Surface Package: FedEx Ground, UPS

• Regional LTL

• Northeast/Mid-Atlantic: New Penn, Pitt Ohio

• Truckload/Specialized

• Expedited: UPS Urgent, Old Dominion, Pitt Ohio, New Penn

• High Value Goods: United Van Lines

• Air Carriers:

• Air Express: FedEx Express

On behalf of PartnerShip - and the thousands of customers that rely on your services as part of our shipping programs - congratulations to all of the transportation carriers that won Quest for Quality awards this year! PartnerShip works only with the best carriers in the industry - and you've all proven to be in that category.

Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. This is especially true when it comes to LTL freight rates. Because there are so many variables that go into your bottom-line LTL freight pricing - such as commodity classification, base rate schedules, discounts, accessorial fees, etc. - it's difficult to really understand if you're getting the best rate when you call your carrier or 3PL for that LTL freight quote. As shown in the example below, sometimes the "highest discount" doesn't always mean the "lowest price."

For this reason, PartnerShip began offering a no-obligation FREE freight analysis service a few years ago to help small businesses sort through their current freight rates to ensure they aren't leaving money on the table. We run several of these analyses for customers every week, and requesting a freight analysis is as simple as:

• Visit PartnerShip.com and complete or brief Freight Analysis Form.

• In the About Your Shipments section of this form, let us know what you are shipping, how frequently you are shipping, and a general idea of where you are shipping to our from.

• If possible, also provide us with examples in an email to select@PartnerShip.com. This could be a few recent freight invoices, or better yet, send us a simple Excel file with recent shipments, including the following four pieces of information: Origin ZIP, Destination ZIP, weight, and commodity type (or classification).

Once we have your request, our LTL freight experts will analyze your shipments to determine your current freight rates. Then we will review the best rates we have in place with our best-in-class LTL transportation carriers to see if you can save additional money on part or all of your shipping. Again, our free freight analysis comes with no-obligation - if you already have the best market rates, we'll let you know so that you can continue to enjoy them.

If you're wondering how your current LTL freight rates compare, before (or after) you ask for that next LTL freight quote from your existing carrier, consider having PartnerShip provide you with a free freight analysis to make sure you are getting the best deal possible.

Like many small businesses, you may not currently have control over the shipments coming into your business. It is common for small businesses to let the vendor shipping the product to you arrange the carrier, select the mode of transportation, and manage the actual pickup and delivery times. In some cases, the convenience of this sort of arrangement may work well for your situation. However, that convenience comes with a cost: you may find that you are paying significantly more for inbound shipping than if you had arranged for it on your own.

Reducing inbound shipping costs is one of the easiest, yet most overlooked ways to reduce your overall transportation expenses. Since you are the buyer of the goods, you can and should determine how those goods are shipped to you. When you control and route your own inbound shipments, you have an excellent opportunity to lower your costs.

Here is a quick, three-step process for getting control of your inbound shipping expenses:

1. Look at one or two invoices from your major suppliers. See what dollar amount they allocate for “shipping and handling.”

2. Compare your suppliers’ freight shipping rates with the rates you have in place with your preferred shipping provider. If you’re a PartnerShip customer, you can easily log into our website and perform a couple rate quotes to see how your freight rates compare (or just give us a call – we’ll do it for you).

3. If you find your rates are lower, draw up a letter for your purchasing department to forward to your suppliers providing details on how you want your products shipped, your small package carrier account number, and your preferred LTL freight carriers (again, PartnerShip can do all of this for you if you’d prefer). The letter also acts as an insurance policy if your supplier mistakenly ships by a carrier not on your routing letter. Having a signed letter allows you to charge vendors back for their mistakes.

Updating your routing instructions with all of your suppliers is the first important step in gaining control of your inbound shipping costs. Ensure your products are delivered to you via your preferred carriers and at your known rates. This takes the unpredictability out of inbound shipping costs, and can save you money in the process.

PartnerShip has a new alliance with ABF, making them the newest carrier partner available through our LTL Freight shipping programs (LTL stands for less-than-truckload). ABF joins our short list of reputable national and regional carriers, which also includes UPS Freight, YRC Freight, Con-way Freight, Old Dominion, FedEx Freight, New Penn, and Pitt Ohio. When PartnerShip customers use the Quote/Create Shipment tool on PartnerShip.com, they will now often see ABF shown as a service option depending upon the specific lane. ABF has been delivering LTL shipments since 1923, and they are one of the largest, most recognized LTL carriers in the industry today, providing both national and regional service. For more information about ABF, how to get no-obligation LTL freight quotes, or to request a free LTL freight shipment analysis, click the button below.

PartnerShip also has an alliance with ABF to provide moving services for many of our retail customers. ABF does this through their U-Pack Moving service. If you are a PartnerShip retail customer interested in adding moving services to your shipping program, please give us a call at 800-599-2902.

With ever-soaring fuel costs and the resulting rise in shipping rates, many businesses may find their profit margins shrinking even as production increases. Many small businesses use e-commerce in the start-up stages, but with the recent rise in shipping rates, owners are looking for ways to reduce shipping costs.  

In-House Strategies

• Postage meters are an inexpensive way to save time and money for companies that either ship very small light weight products or for which shipping is a smaller portion of their overall product delivery.  A Postage meter will weigh packages accurately, assess precise postage charges and print the shipping label. By taking the guessing out of shipping estimates, both your company and your customer will be satisfied, and shipping overages will be eliminated.

• Compare services and pricing for each carrier on common shipping requirements. Factor in delivery time as well as shipping costs; customers satisfaction is higher when delivery times are shorter.  Eventually you'll gain a picture of what shipping criteria is best serviced by which service. For example FedEx Express has overnight and 2-day delivery options for small packages, but if your shipment is heavier (more than 10 pounds) and isn't under strict time constraints, it might be more cost-effective to use FedEx Ground service.

Outbound Shipping Solutions for Larger Volumes

• Consolidate your orders into less-than-truckload (LTL) freight shipments (more than 200 pounds) could save you even more on shipping. If your company has multiple products going to the same customer, it might make sense to consolidate them into one shipment and use an LTL freight carrier like UPS Freight or YRC Freight. You'll pay quite a bit less than parcel or express service and your liability coverage will be much better as well should there be any loss or damage in transit. 

• Work with a third party logistics (3PL) company. If you don't have the time or resources to figure out which carriers and services would be best for your shipping volumes, a company like PartnerShip can handle the logistics for you and often negotiate a better overall shipping rate for you.

Inbound Shipping Costs

• Small business owners may lump their inbound freight costs into the cost of goods, but poor inbound freight management can severely impact your gross profit margin.  Be sure every vendor invoice is reviewed for hidden fees. Vendors can inflate "Shipping and Handling" fees to compensate for lower priced items. 

• Send routing instructions to your vendors specifying which carriers you want them to use when shipping you your products. You can also set up a direct billing account for vendors that ship to you via FedEx or LTL freight carriers through your 3PL partner. With a direct relationship, you'll be able to track shipping volume putting you in a place to negotiate a better overall rate. 

Small businesses must continually adjust their practices to survive and grow in today's economic climate. Adapting to rising shipping costs is something your company can't afford not to do.

The National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) is a standard for thousands of commodities likely to be shipped by carriers who agree to use this system. Factors such as weight, item type, dimensions, density, and valuation, among others, are used to determine the NMFC. The NMFC identifies what you are shipping and its freight class, which ultimately affects your freight shipping rates.

Frequent freight shippers and users of the NMFC will want to take note of some changes to the classification system – which will be effective April 14, 2012:

As always, PartnerShip is here to help you determine your commodity's NMFC. Contact us at 800-599-2902 or email select@PartnerShip.com with any questions. Our freight experts stand ready to help you with your freight shipping or to provide you with LTL freight quotes if needed.