Ever wonder how your inbound LTL (less than truckload) costs compare to other direct-to-consumer merchants? Attendees of the Operations Summit will be able to participate in a special benchmark study. “We’ll collect freight bills during and after the Summit and each participating company will receive a confidential, cost-free benchmark report on how its costs compare with other merchants,” Jeff Kline, president of Kline Management Consulting, says.
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Don’t just assume your current LTL carriers are giving you the best deal possible, Kline says. Test the waters with a competitive bid process.
“Make sure you do your homework; leverage volume with a few good service carriers; and negotiate cost, not discounts,” Kline says. “You may benefit from a buying consortium that leverages multi-company volume to obtain economies of scale.”
If your company is responsible freight, “require vendors to ship collect with your carriers and avoid pre-pay and add,” Kline says. “A well designed vendor routing guide is the most important tool to manage inbound freight.”
If you want to know more, Kline will be speaking on this topic at the Operations Summit in Memphis May 2-3. For more information, go to www.operationssummit.com.
Jim Tierney ([email protected]) is a senior writer for Multichannel Merchant. You can connect with him on Twitter (TierneyMCM) and LinkedIn, or call him at 203-358-4265.