It’s no secret that global eCommerce demand is impacting carrier capacity and driving transportation costs higher and higher. This is adding complexity to supply chain processes. More than ever, shippers are turning to outside experts to help find carrier capacity while controlling costs and automating processes. As a result, 3PLs saw tremendous growth in the last year, according to consultancy Armstrong & Associates, Inc. Even freight forwarders like Maersk have announced their intention to move […]
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Author Archive for Bob Malley
If your job is to develop a connector from your business systems to a multi-carrier API, there are some important considerations you should keep in mind. It’s a multi-carrier world. The days of picking a carrier or two to handle all your transportation needs are long gone. Customers are demanding more delivery options. The driver shortage and carrier capacity crunch are creating reliability issues. As a result, costs are only going up with no […]
Read More →E-commerce is driving the demand for smaller, more frequent last-mile deliveries. As a result, parcel rates are soaring at twice the rate of inflation. At the same time, Amazon continues to reinforce consumer expectations for free shipping and more delivery options, even as it loses billions of dollars on shipping. Shippers large and small need to look more closely at parcel transportation costs and are turning to enterprise shipping software with data-driven analytics for answers. […]
Read More →There are hundreds of thousands of 3rd party and carrier-provided shipping systems in circulation like label-printing cash registers cha-chinging in warehouses all over the world. Many shippers have more than one, each one representing a silo of valuable information that could provide valuable insight into potential performance improvements and cost-saving opportunities for parcel execution. Sadly, even as shipping costs are increasing at more than twice the rate of inflation, all of this data is locked […]
Read More →Taking their lead from UPS, FedEx, and other parcel carriers, LTL freight carriers are starting to supplement traditional NMFC class-based rating and are applying space-based (also referred to as “dimensional” or “dim weight”) rating to freight in an effort to maximize the cubic utilization of vehicles. This change has many shippers guessing about what to quote for shipping costs because they don’t know what the weight and dimensions of a shipment will be until they […]
Read More →The hyper-competitive world of eCommerce has come down to this: it’s my supply chain against your supply chain. If I can ship better, cheaper, and faster than you, I win. For that to happen, I need to provide my customers with more choices and better visibility when they need it. And, of course, easy and free returns. In the meantime, Amazon continues to raise the bar. For eCommerce businesses (who isn’t one these days?) to […]
Read More →Shippers surprised by unexpected dimensional weight fees The growth of eCommerce has put a premium on parcel carrier capacity. In response, UPS and FedEx have continued to lower the bar for when they will apply dimensional weight rating to cartons, which means more shippers will pay more for cartons that are light relative to their size. In response, shippers are looking for new ways to more efficiently and cost-effectively manage carton packing to either avoid […]
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Supply Chain Brief
The State of Parcel TMS Technology
There was a time when even the largest shippers employed clerks to look up rates on wall charts and handwrite ship-to addresses into logs. Then came manifest systems that printed reports and labels, and after that, multi-carrier shipping systems. Those days are long gone, as eCommerce has caused an explosion in parcel volumes worldwide and an expansion of carrier services to meet the delivery demands of consumers. Parcel shipping technology has evolved in lockstep with […]
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