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MFW Social Posts
July 26, 2022
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| A BEGINNERS FIELD GUIDE TO CHOOSING A FREIGHT BROKER Sure, this sounds self-serving coming from us – a freight broker. We understand if you’re skeptical. But there are important reasons for this post, and why we chose to share it. First, we don’t lie – we tell the truth, always. In fact, that’s one of our three organizational core behaviors. Violate it and get fired. It’s that simple. Hopefully that gives you some degree of confidence. Second, we know when we’re not the right choice for you, so much so that we’ll tell you if we can’t meet your needs. Our reputation is everything, so making promises we can’t keep breaches our corporate purpose (“Making the wheels of transportation far less squeaky”). If you’re new in the shipping world and learning about freight brokers, here are three ways they can provide value for you: 🚚 ADDITIONAL CAPACITY. There will be times when you need to transport more product than anticipated, and both fleet and asset-based carriers may have difficulty meeting this requirement. 🚚 FLEXIBILITY. Contracts, price points, market shifts. Complex stuff. As an example, tight markets can cause shippers’ needs for alternatives, and that’s where an effective broker comes in. 🚚 PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP. The best brokers understand their customers’ business very well – things like freight flows, problems, and special needs. The level of service provided is what earns their customer-shippers repeat business. However, all is not a bed of roses in the freight brokerage community. Here are a few areas where brokers can fall short: 👉 LIMITED POOL OF CARRIERS. Is the broker’s rolodex thin? If so, that spells problems when you need them to supply the right truck to the right place at the right price. 👉 SLOW RESPONSE WHEN PROBLEMS ARISE. When the unexpected happens – and it will happen – shippers need a real, trusted partner who will recognize a problem and fix it immediately. If the broker drops the ball, your exposure and associated risk increases. 👉 LACK OF SUPPLY CHAIN VISIBILITY. On time pickup and delivery? Manual reporting won’t do. Does your broker have the technological chops to keep you in the know in real time? This is just a starting point when qualifying a freight broker, but if you’re looking for more help from a respected industry leader, simply give us a call. We’ll help guide you however we can. #transportation #logistics #freightforwarding |
Qualities to Look For in a Freight Broker
Surveys consistently show shippers care more about a broker’s trustworthiness than about raw performance numbers. Quality beats quantity. Three qualities matter most:
- Proactive communication. A good broker tells you about delays and cancellations before you find out on your own. Many shippers say that level of service is worth as much as a 95 percent on-time rate.
- A credible carrier network. Instant quotes mean nothing if the load goes uncovered. Your broker should speak to real carrier relationships: available capacity, equipment types, operating authority, and safety ratings.
- Digital engagement. You should have a customer portal and TMS tools that give you visibility and communication access, not status-quo phone tag.
Service, expertise, and reliability never go out of style. Be demanding on all three. Get a quote and put our carrier network and portal to work.
Order Taker or Innovator?
The clearest test of a broker is what they do with a simple request. Ask three brokers for volume LTL quotes and an order taker gives you exactly that and moves on. An innovator looks at the freight and asks a better question. On one recent shipment, instead of only quoting the volume LTL the customer asked for, we also ran partial truckload and box truck options. Those came back significantly cheaper, with fewer stops and faster transit, and still met every operational need. Lower cost plus faster service is the difference between a broker who fills orders and one who looks for the result you actually want.