Comments on: The Green (and Social Media) Side of Con-way’s TrueLTL Pricing http://logisticsviewpoints.com/2009/07/22/the-green-and-social-media-side-of-con-ways-trueltl-pricing/ Providing logistics professionals with clear and concise analyses of Logistics Trends, Technologies, and Services Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:19:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Gary_WDX http://logisticsviewpoints.com/2009/07/22/the-green-and-social-media-side-of-con-ways-trueltl-pricing/comment-page-1/#comment-67 Gary_WDX Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:59:01 +0000 http://logisticsviewpoints.com/?p=1410#comment-67 Kudos to Con-way for offering creative solutions. Certainly the "complexity and unpredictability" of LTL pricing has lacked an adequate mousetrap. But the problem doesn't even end with LTL rates. If you have about a quarter load, who will be cheaper, an LTL, partial load, or maybe a skid rate based carrier? It's not always clear until you price it. Finding drayage rates has been a nightmare for shippers. Quote shopping has been a sorely inefficient process, although a crucial one in freight spend management. Carriers also need more efficient ways of providing quotes, and ensuring they are included in the search more frequently. Rate bureaus offer only part of the solution, but they are mostly "foreign tariffs" (not optimized for carriers' operational lane efficiencies and marketing focus in their effort to attract lane density), and expensive product for carriers to share rates with their customers. Managing generated quotes, and referencing them for billing and audit has been a challenge for both shippers and carriers. Fortunately, there ARE new mousetraps now available. Gary Silver WDXfreight.com Kudos to Con-way for offering creative solutions.

Certainly the “complexity and unpredictability” of LTL pricing has lacked an adequate mousetrap. But the problem doesn’t even end with LTL rates. If you have about a quarter load, who will be cheaper, an LTL, partial load, or maybe a skid rate based carrier? It’s not always clear until you price it. Finding drayage rates has been a nightmare for shippers. Quote shopping has been a sorely inefficient process, although a crucial one in freight spend management. Carriers also need more efficient ways of providing quotes, and ensuring they are included in the search more frequently.

Rate bureaus offer only part of the solution, but they are mostly “foreign tariffs” (not optimized for carriers’ operational lane efficiencies and marketing focus in their effort to attract lane density), and expensive product for carriers to share rates with their customers.

Managing generated quotes, and referencing them for billing and audit has been a challenge for both shippers and carriers.

Fortunately, there ARE new mousetraps now available.

Gary Silver
WDXfreight.com

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