Halloween is a night of costumes and candy. Monsters and scares are packaged in a commercially whimsical way. It’s a holiday meant for well-spirited spooking, not actual fear and torment.
However, in the world of transportation and logistics, nightmares can bleed into reality. Sometimes everything in a shipment just goes wrong. Commerce Express Inc. calls these “freightmares”.
The following is a “freightmare” Commerce Express Inc.’s Managing Director Andrew Koval recalls hearing from a shipper before they switched to Commerce Express.
“Freightmare”: Not the right driver?
The shipper’s story begins like any other truckload shipment throughout time—a truck driver arrives to pick up the cargo.
It’s an important shipment they needed delivered to a newer customer of theirs. The shipper didn’t necessarily feel anxious, but they wanted to make sure they would leave a good impression on the receiver. The last thing they would want is for an outside vendor to sully their reputation with an unfamiliar customer. But again, the shipper wasn’t anxious. After all, what’s the worst that could happen, they thought. We haven’t had a delivery gone wrong in a while.
Things start off great, in fact stupendously marvelous! The driver arrives to pick up the cargo—on time. The shipper’s warehouse crew promptly loads the cargo into the truck’s trailer. During the transfer process, the crew noted just how pleasant the driver is: he engaged in banter about the area’s underperforming professional football team; expressed a desire to unwind on the golf course this coming weekend; and provided the crew tips on what to order at a new hot chicken restaurant that opened on the other side of town. The crew and the driver wished each other farewell, a moment of serendipity among otherwise dull pickups earlier in the week.
Who is this guy? The shipper’s crew chatted amongst themselves after the driver left. He’s totally cooler than the others that have picked up here.
However, “freightmares” rear their ugly heads when shippers least expect it.
An hour or so later after the pickup, the shipper’s personnel came across an issue. They find out that the driver that picked up was not the originally assigned driver on the load. To make matters worse, they have no visibility over the shipment in transit. Uh oh.
In a matter of seconds, the shipper was hit by a wave of stress. They had no idea who the driver was and where he intended to take their cargo. With zero visibility, they were left guessing whether the product would arrive at all to the customer’s location, much less on-time and in good condition. The worst-case scenario, the cargo could have been stolen or used as a hostage-load.
Whatever the case turned out to be, the shipper had to spend additional time and money to source and send more product to the customer. Justifiably ruffled by the experience, the shipper felt empowered to make a change in their transportation processes, no doubt motivated by the desire to prevent a fictitious pickup from happening again.
Execute a plan against “freightmares”
Even “freightmares” can have happy endings. The shipper chose Commerce Express Inc. to manage their truckload transportation needs and ensure only trusted and vetted transportation providers arrive to pick up and deliver their cargo.
Meet the Execute component of Commerce Express Inc.’s ENABLE service protocol.
As part of Commerce Express’ ENABLE, Execute is a promise from our team to properly dispatch and track cargo using best practices and technologies. This includes our team providing driver and truck information to our shipper-clients to verify whether the correct driver is given the freight. Important documents, like bills of lading and carrier credentials, as well as transit details must be confirmed prior to the driver taking off.
If any information doesn’t immediately match, shippers are instructed to contact our team to get authorization on whether to load the driver or not.
Once a shipment is in transit, Commerce Express keeps a close eye on it with tracking technologies. This allows us to provide multiple updates a day and ensure peace of mind that the shipment is moving towards its destination.
“If an issue does arise Commerce Express proactively advises on the issue and presents a solution and sets expectations on what is going to happen over the next steps,” says Commerce Express Inc. Managing Director Andrew Koval.
Book a meeting to further discuss our commitment to preventing “freightmares”.
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