Dear Santa,
It’s hard to believe that another year has passed. It hasn’t been an easy year…with terrorism at the Boston Marathon and businesses going belly up. But we managed to hold our own. It could have been worse. I’m sure your first stop this year will be Massachusetts. They deserve all they get…and then some.
Well, I was very good this year. If you don’t believe me just ask my friends. In fact, I put all of my barcode labels on correctly. All of my address labels were legible and complete. And, believe it or not, all my packages were properly weighed and measured. And if that’s not enough to convince you, I’ll have you know that all of our cartons are properly constructed so there is absolutely no chance for product damage during transit!
Based on the above, I think you’ll agree that I am deserving of a rather generous Christmas. So let this serve as an official list of my Christmas requests:
Simplified Carrier Contract
Why is it that my carrier contract is harder to understand with each passing year? There are too many areas that confuse me. For example, why bother with a Minimum Net Package Charge (Zone 2/1 Pound) when it can be built into my incentive level. Also, I would like to have one contract for all my packages tendered to FedEx rather than having separate FedEx Express and FedEx Ground agreements. Make my life simple.
Simplified Pricing
Whatever happened to a straight forward incentive rate applicable to all my packages? I’m tired of base and tier pricing, matrices and thresholds, fuel surcharges, delivery area surcharges, residential differential, remote delivery charges and accessorial charges. And no dim weigh. You have to be a graduate degree from M.I.T. in Probability and Statistics to figure it all out! Sometimes I think that the carriers purposely make it confusing for people like me. In the interest of customer relations, carriers should be willing to provide me with the ‘effective” rate of their contract so I am properly informed about their pricing. Simply put, pricing structures are out of control.
Reduced Split Shipments
With the technology available in today’s Information Age there is no reason why carriers cannot electronically notify (e.g. email) shippers of split shipments. It would be a welcomed consolation for shippers and the right way for carriers to handle the industry’s ongoing shipment integrity problem. I fully realize that all packages are handled separately as soon as they are picked up and a carrier’s ability to deliver an entire shipment the same day is purely a function of its on-time service performance. Given that carrier on-time service is not 100%, the above proposal would be much appreciated.
More Competition
Competition is greatly needed in the small package arena. With competition comes better service, lower pricing and wonderful innovation. (Please stop reading if you are against any of these three things and immediately return to your cave.)
Well, Santa, that’s all for now. Happy Holidays and enjoy your long winter nap. It’s well deserved. Merry Christmas to all and have a great New Year!
Joe Loughran
Joe Loughran is President of Parcel Rate Solutions and an expert in the parcel industry. Parcel Rate Solutions is a transportation consulting company offering services in Carrier Rate Analysis and Carrier Agreement Analysis. Joe can be reached by phone at (724) 934-0626 or email: loughran@parcelratesolutions.com.