Solving the 5 critical challenges preventing carrier success
A load comes in at 9:03 a.m. It’s a high paying lane from a priority shipper, and you’ve got a driver to take it on right now. But your dispatch team isn’t equipped to respond in time. The bid goes unanswered while someone hunts down lane history in a spreadsheet and calculates rates by hand. By the time the team replies, the load has been taken by another carrier. Now your new customer is still waiting for onboarding paperwork, and the driver who could’ve taken the shipment stays idle.
At 9:46, you’re blindsided by changing requirements for another long-time customer, spiking load acceptance times. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment, but the full consequences of the bottleneck won’t be felt until the carrier scorecards are delivered. Your teams start to worry about keeping the shipper relationship alive as they scramble to manage the chaos.
Hour by hour, the challenges that come with outdated systems and disconnected processes combine to take their toll on revenue. At the center of it all is a tangled web of slow communication, manual effort and missed insight. But even the toughest challenges carriers face can be overcome with solutions designed to help transportation companies fit into the flow of today’s supply chain.
Let’s break down where it hurts the most and how implementing new solutions could prove to be a turning point for carriers.
Slow tender response time
Delayed response to load tenders leads to missed opportunities, slashed revenue and eroded trust. With shippers giving preference to carriers who respond quickly, inconsistent communication damages relationships and increases the chances of being passed over entirely. The longer it takes to respond, the less likely a carrier is to win profitable loads.
That makes reducing the time from receipt to response a high priority for carriers, and as transportation companies look to process optimization to push times down, load tender responses are a prime target.
As companies evaluate options to accelerate the pace of business, leaders are turning to centralized EDI solutions that can simplify tender responses. Instead of chasing down information, dispatchers can respond to tenders within seconds, helping boost revenue and keep preferred carrier status. The benefits of implementing an EDI solution can be far-reaching, as carriers find they gain added visibility on top of improved customer relationships.
Delayed shipper onboarding
Onboarding new shippers can require carriers to enter a danger zone of endless emails, redundant paperwork and disconnected workflows. When carrier teams are stuck in the weeds and unable to focus on performance or relationship-building, shippers experience downhill delays, confusion and frustration.
Ensuring that new customers feel comfortable and your systems align can help carriers shorten time to value. But what happens when all the new business results in a mess of disconnected portals and logins? As you take on more shippers, the need to work alongside their tech stack can drag efficiency down.
Some carriers are working toward standardized forms, real-time data validation and automatic system updates to reduce friction and error, but increasing numbers of transportation companies are opting for turnkey, full-service solutions with onboarding workflows already built in. This results in shippers being onboarded in weeks instead of months, allowing carriers to grow their business without increasing manual effort.
Lack of TMS optimization
Operating without a TMS—or with one that’s poorly configured—leaves carriers gambling with their shipments. There’s no reliable way to manage capacity, optimize routes or track carrier performance. The result is a mixed bag of effects caused by manual processes: slow dispatching, underused resources and excessive labor costs.
But even as more carriers move to a TMS system to handle these details, barebones implementations can leave out vital features, leading to processes that are only half as powerful as they could be. As carriers work to remain relevant in a fiercely competitive industry, ensuring that their TMS is supported by solutions that streamline other areas of the business can help them stay ahead.
As carriers fight to keep pace with their peers, more powerful TMS tools will be a deciding factor in their success. A centralized EDI system can integrate seamlessly with TMS platforms, enhancing their capability by feeding them real-time data. The addition enables better automation and more accurate routing while boosting the scalability of the business as a whole.
Weak shipper scorecard results
Without clear, trackable shipper scorecard metrics, performance management becomes guesswork. Are you meeting SLAs? Are certain lanes costing more than they’re worth? Without the numbers, you’re flying blind, and that’s risky, especially with shippers who expect transparency and proof of value.
Better scorecard results can strengthen partnerships with higher freight volumes and better contracts, while less desirable scorecard results can spell disaster for medium-sized carriers. But to get the best scores, it’s clear that carriers need the right solutions in place to manage common friction points that can drive scores down and leave dollars on the table.
Solutions that enable automatic metric tracking from load acceptance to delivery KPIs can best help carriers sidestep those friction points and achieve scorecard success. The result is a win-win situation: Shippers get the visibility they need, and carriers gain actionable insights to improve efficiency, win more freight and do it all with improved service quality.
Trouble turning growth into scale
As volume increases, so does the complexity of managing the people, systems and data needed to support a network of new customers. Without streamlined workflows, growth becomes unsustainable, leading to burnout, mistakes and customer dissatisfaction. That means operational inefficiency isn’t just holding carriers back from doing their best work day-to-day—it’s holding them back from scalable growth year-over-year.
Scaling logistics operations can be shackled by complexity as carriers expand operations to take on new business, with slowdowns surrounding billing and hiring compromising carrier revenue. As carriers manage a list of billing templates, schedules and workflows, the added complexity requires carriers to spend extra time handling shifting requirements.
The disruptions have led carriers to look for solutions that create a foundation for scalable operations by standardizing communication, automating routine tasks and consolidating fragmented customer portals. New solutions allow carriers to grow without having to chase down updates, reconcile documents or respond to avoidable exceptions, leaving teams to focus on strategy and service.
The turning point
The challenges facing transportation companies today are more about structure than speed. A centralized, full-service solution offers a framework for running leaner, faster and more resilient operations, and it shows in our original example:
It’s 9:03 a.m. and a high-priority customer posts a shipment that’s bid, accepted and off the dock faster than ever. Your team is on top of every reply and all your customers experience an onboarding workflow that’s fast and standardized. Drivers are busy, and every requirement is managed without extra personnel to manage it all. The upcoming scorecards look great, and you’re looking forward to taking on even more shipments next quarter as the excellent results keep rolling in.
Sound too good to be true? SPS for 3PLs Transportation Solution can get you there. In a business where every delay costs money and every inefficiency compounds, carriers who focus on modernizing their workflows can gain margin and momentum. That’s why SPS for 3PLs Transportation Solution was made to help carriers work at the pace of today’s supply chain and offer a standout customer experience in the process. Learn more here.
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