Mastering LTL Shipping Solutions: Overcoming Common Challenges

Navigating the world of Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) shipping can be complex, but with the right LTL shipping solutions, businesses can transform these challenges into opportunities. This guide delves into the intricacies of LTL shipping, offering effective strategies and solutions to streamline your operations.

1. Minimizing Freight Damage and Loss in LTL Shipping

Challenge: LTL shipments are coupled with other shipments, so by their nature, they often involve multiple handling points. The increase in handling and stops results in an increase in the risk of damage or loss during transit.

Solutions: A key LTL shipping solution involves investing in proper packaging and labeling. The use of sturdy packaging materials and marking fragile items can help mitigate the risk. Additionally, shippers can elect to ship with reputable carriers with a track record of handling shipments carefully. 

If you’re shipping items that require more specific shipping conditions, more unique solutions involve the use of specific freight damage instruments. For instance, Tive is a FreightPOP partner that creates instruments that track environmental changes in your freight – anything from light and temperature to shock. Visibility into this shipment data on your fragile items is invaluable in ensuring the carriers handle your shipments with care once they’re out the door. 

2. Accurate Dimensional Data for Efficient LTL Shipping

Challenge: Incorrectly measuring or providing inaccurate dimensions of your freight can lead to pricing discrepancies and delays.

Solution: Embrace technology solutions like Cubiscan for accurate freight dimensioning. This LTL shipping solution ensures precise measurements, integrating seamlessly with your shipping software to avoid data entry errors and enhance efficiency.

A more unique solution is found in dimensioning hardware suppliers such as Cubiscan. Cubiscan’s hardware automatically dimensions pallet shipments in seconds with 100% accuracy. Further ensuring data accuracy, this information can be pushed directly into your shipping software to avoid any data entry errors and reduce labor hours. 

3. Streamlining Freight Class Determination

Challenge: Determining the correct freight class for your shipments can be challenging, leading to pricing errors.

Solution: Utilize LTL shipping solutions like the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) guidelines and consider partnering with a transportation management system (TMS) like FreightPOP, which can help you determine the right freight class based on your shipment's characteristics. Additionally, many shippers have been known to forge agreements with carriers to always ship their freight within a specific classification, whether or not the exact specifications for that freight class are met each time. This reduces labor on the carrier’s side while ensuring consistency and pricing predictability for the shipper. 

4. Optimizing Freight Quoting and Pricing

Challenge: Obtaining accurate and competitive LTL freight quotes can be time-consuming and complex. So complex that many times, shippers will end up going with one of the first few quotes they get instead of price shopping, contributing to significantly higher freight spend.

Solution: The days of individually contacting carriers to quote shipments is gone. Modern LTL shipping solutions involve using a TMS partner that can provide access to a network of hundreds of carriers and real-time pricing information, regardless of shipment mode. This simplifies the quoting process and helps you secure competitive rates.

5. Enhancing Shipment Tracking and Visibility

Challenge: Keeping track of LTL shipments and providing real-time visibility to customers can be challenging. In a world where customers expect speedy delivery and total transparency in shipment tracking, a lack of visibility can easily lead to dissatisfied customers and negatively impact your bottom line.

Solution: Access to robust tracking and visibility features can help mitigate this common issue. With real-time tracking and alerts, you and your customers can keep informed about shipment status.

6. Effective Carrier Selection for LTL Shipping

Challenge: Choosing the right carrier for your LTL shipments can be a daunting task. Multiple factors need to be considered to find the right fit – price, service level, OTD rate, etc. 

Solution: Carrier selection tools are a common part of LTL shipping solutions, and are extremely useful when it comes to selecting your shipping partner. These tools consider various factors, such as cost, transit time, and carrier performance, to help you make informed decisions.

7. Managing Accessorial Charges

Challenge: Accessorial charges, such as liftgate fees or inside delivery charges, can add unexpected costs to LTL shipments when shippers don’t plan for them. 

Solution: Clearly communicate your shipment's requirements to carriers upfront to avoid surprise charges. Certain LTL shipping solutions can help you identify and manage common accessorials, with some even able to pull accessorial charge history for specific delivery locations and auto-build those into the shipment. 

8. Accurate Invoice Auditing

Challenge: Auditing LTL freight invoices for accuracy can be time-consuming and is extremely prone to human errors. Industry analysts share that somewhere between 15-66% of freight invoices are inaccurate and that almost just as many are missed by internal manual auditing procedures. 

Solution: An LTL shipping solution that comes with an invoice auditing tool can save you significantly on both freight spend and manual hours needed to check each invoice against the initial shipping quote. Auditing tools automate this process by flagging carrier invoices that don’t match quotes automatically and halting payment until they are reviewed internally.

9. Building Strong Carrier Relationships

Challenge: Maintaining positive relationships with carriers is pivotal for shippers. Open communication, honoring commitments, and mutual respect are key for prioritizing long-term partnerships but might be easier said than done without the right structures in place. 

Solution: Having an LTL shipping solution that centralizes shipping information, automates processes, and facilitates rate comparisons can help forge better shipper-carrier relationships. Regular feedback and fair negotiations further enhance collaboration, allowing for a true partnership for both shipper and carrier. 

10. Embracing Sustainability

Challenge: Reducing the environmental impact of LTL shipping is becoming increasingly important, and shippers are uniquely positioned to make significant strides toward a healthier environment. But beyond the environment, shippers are positioned to make a significant positive societal impact as well, and this is typically less known. 

Solution: To safeguard our environment, select carriers that prioritize sustainable initiatives and practices. Moreover, employ advanced tools to amalgamate shipments, thereby minimizing carbon footprints. 

Societal impact is another consideration and unique aspect of comprehensive LTL shipping solutions. Align with carriers affiliated with nonprofits like Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT). TAT collaborates with carriers to equip their workforce with skills to detect and report human trafficking incidents. To identify these certified carriers, leverage TMS solutions like FreightPOP, which has integrated a feature showcasing a TAT badge for carriers whose employees have undergone the requisite training. 

LTL shipping, with its unique challenges, can be efficiently managed with the right solutions. By adopting advanced LTL shipping solutions, businesses can enhance their shipping operations, reduce costs, and improve customer service. Embrace these strategies to master your LTL shipping needs and elevate your logistics to the next level.

At FreightPOP, our commitment to a customer-first approach in logistics is not just a philosophy; it's a practice that has gained recognition in Media Coverage. What sets us apart is our consultative strategy. Many clients seek us out to address and resolve inefficiencies in their shipping operations, aiming for full-scale optimization. Partnering with FreightPOP means more than just implementing a Transportation Management System (TMS). We engage deeply with the unique dynamics of your business, ensuring that your shipping operations are optimized from top to bottom.

If you're not ready to work directly with FreightPOP, start off here - explore the intricacies of freight shipping with our detailed ebook, The Ultimate Guide to FTL and LTL Shipping. Crafted by experienced shipping experts for industry veterans, this resource provides thorough insights specifically aimed at enhancing your shipping processes. Get your copy today and take your shipping strategy to the next level!