Matt Alanzo
2004-08-05 11:24:51 UTC
Each month we need to ship 6 - 12 lots of LTL !! blanket wrapped!!
furniture, usually 10-20 lineal feet of product per project.
Shipments all originate from Muskegon, MI but go to a constantly
changing roster of customers in the lower 48 states, mostly around
major cities.
I have given up trying to find a freight broker willing to mess with
blanket wrapped LTL to ever changing locations at a reasonable price.
(Yes, we can consign to North American Van, Berger, Allied, etc. but
at their freight rates our "closure rate" on quotes drops to single
digits and we would go out of business.)
Is the alternative subscribing to a freight matching service and
identifying trucks ourselves? We could 1) persuade our plant to stock
single use blankets, 2) load/wrap the product ourselves in the trailer
(no driver involvement) and 3) require our customers to unload their
own product themselves (again, no driver involvement).
Is this reasonable from the truckers viewpoint? What issues would
this raise with the truckers?
Which freight matching service offers the best value given the above
situation? DAT Connect.com appears to be the market leader by a huge
margin but at $100/month they are extremely pricey for our
application. Do the others have too little traffic to warrant the
setup grief? [I suspect that truckers willing to accept a blanket
wrapped LTL are going to be rare birds indeed.]
www.directfreight.com
www.getloaded.com
www.datconnect.com
furniture, usually 10-20 lineal feet of product per project.
Shipments all originate from Muskegon, MI but go to a constantly
changing roster of customers in the lower 48 states, mostly around
major cities.
I have given up trying to find a freight broker willing to mess with
blanket wrapped LTL to ever changing locations at a reasonable price.
(Yes, we can consign to North American Van, Berger, Allied, etc. but
at their freight rates our "closure rate" on quotes drops to single
digits and we would go out of business.)
Is the alternative subscribing to a freight matching service and
identifying trucks ourselves? We could 1) persuade our plant to stock
single use blankets, 2) load/wrap the product ourselves in the trailer
(no driver involvement) and 3) require our customers to unload their
own product themselves (again, no driver involvement).
Is this reasonable from the truckers viewpoint? What issues would
this raise with the truckers?
Which freight matching service offers the best value given the above
situation? DAT Connect.com appears to be the market leader by a huge
margin but at $100/month they are extremely pricey for our
application. Do the others have too little traffic to warrant the
setup grief? [I suspect that truckers willing to accept a blanket
wrapped LTL are going to be rare birds indeed.]
www.directfreight.com
www.getloaded.com
www.datconnect.com