Collaboration is an essential skill for business partners to meet and exceed customer expectations. This also goes for businesses' shipper-carrier relationships.

Shippers should always demand a high level of service from their carriers. However, timely pickup and delivery goes both ways. While employing carriers to move loads, shippers can help make the shipment-delivery process smoother and simultaneously improve the shipper-carrier relationship in a number of ways.

Kevin Snobel, general manager of Ontario, Canada-based Caravan Logistics Inc., recently offered the following shipping tips to Inbound Logistics:

1. Your requirements of carriers should be realistic and legal.
This should be common sense, if not good business. Unrealistic delivery times are just that — unrealistic. High standards, yes; fantasy deliveries, no. Plus, legally speaking, the responsibility ultimately ends up back on the shipper.

2. Negotiate terms with carriers up front. Stick to the terms.
Like all businesses, carriers need positive cash flow; they often grant credit. Yet credit should be earned, not automatically granted. So prove to carriers you deserve the privilege of credit.

3. Be flexible about requiring an original bill of lading (BOL).
With all the legal requirements carriers face today, they cannot always give out a signed BOL. Rather, carriers can provide a clear and legible signed proof of delivery. A BOL is a contract for carriage, a receipt for the cargo and, most important, a transfer of title to the cargo once delivered.

4. Let drivers do what they are paid to do: drive.
It is in your best interest and the driver's that he drive the truck. Drivers drive; the company and dispatchers do the dispatching. So provide the dispatcher all shipment-relevant information when you book the freight.

5. Provide accurate weights, measurements and requirements when booking shipments.
If the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) stops a carrier who proffers incorrect information, it will look like a shady operation, something illegal. The DOT will eventually go after the shipper of record.

In another Inbound Logistics piece, Snobel points out the minimum information shippers should provide to their carriers, as follows:

• Accurate piece count;
• Accurate weight (gross);
• Shipper's full name, address and telephone number;
• Consignee's full name, address, telephone number, contact, shipping hours and after-hours contact information;
• Customs brokers if goods are being shipped between the U.S. and Canada (See Tip #6.);
• Full description of goods being shipped; and
• Special requirements, such as hazmat and protective services.

6. Be aware of border-crossing shipments.
On every shipment, a carrier needs a customs broker at the time of booking. The broker should be provided long before the shipment reaches the border. If not, delivery of the load can be delayed.

Also, shipping across borders can incur extra costs, such as sufferance charges, bond charges, trailer detention, extra pickup and extra delivery, of which you should be aware.

And when moving freight across international borders, shippers should be sure to have the proper information and documentation. Again, the shipment's contents, weight and customs clearance information are ultimately the responsibility of the shipper and consignee.

7. Pay your bills! Know the claims facts.
Carriers can always approach shippers and consignees for payment. A BOL does not transfer the title until freight is paid for.

And shippers CANNOT hold back payments or reduce payments for any freight, cargo or damage claim. These are separate issues and are dealt with as such by the courts. Besides, such behavior can damage the relationship you as the shipper are trying to foster (or establish) with your carrier.

If carriers sell service and integrity first, and rates second, everyone can prosper, says Snobel. Any help shippers can provide is surely welcomed.

Primary Source

How to Be a Better Shipper
by Kevin Snobel
Inbound Logistics, May 2006

Additional Resources

Help Your Carrier; Be a Better Shipper
by Kevin Snobel
Inbound Logistics, September 2004

Logistically Speaking: If you're not collaborating with your carriers, what are you waiting for?
by Dave Blanchard
Logistics Today, March 2006