Freight Management Worldwide

Ensuring that you have buy-in from senior management is one of the most familiar tenets of change management practice. But in a freight transportation context this oft-quoted principle takes on a special meaning.

How many top non-supply chain executives do you know who have a solid grounding in the movement of freight? Literacy rates are high in the C-suite when it comes to functions such as sales or marketing, but in many companies logistics terms don’t tend to trip off the tongue in senior-level meetings. Securing the commitment of these leaders when launching a substantial freight project can be a tough sell when the processes involved are relatively anonymous.

When this lack of awareness is pervasive – as it can be even when it comes to basic freight management practices – the job of changing behavior patterns is extremely challenging.

In a recent project a company was having problems with the cost of its outbound finished goods. The enterprise shipped raw materials into its facility by road, and the trucks usually left empty. An obvious solution – obvious, that is, to practitioners – was to use the empty trucks to carry finished goods on the outbound leg. But managers, even at a senior level, found it difficult to understand that they were already paying for empty backhauls and the outbound solution was a cost-effective strategy.

Most freight managers would have discerned that in such a situation the carrier bringing empty trucks home was probably charging the shipper a rate premium based on their location. While the carrier was not overlooking the cost of positioning its equipment – it understood the importance of maximizing equipment utilization – the transportation buyer was seemingly unaware of this expense.