What Information do you Need to Make a Transport Booking?
Have you ever sent a shipment with a pallet network provider that took a lot longer than anticipated to arrive at its destination? Or perhaps, even after you have sent the correct information, your chosen carrier has still struggled to re-attempt the delivery of that particular order?
I have worked in road freight for 10 years, and during this time I have dealt with almost every imaginable situation that has caused delays or at least influenced them. Yet with the exceptions of force majeure or unexpected industrial action, the majority of delays can be easily avoided if the correct information is passed between the shipper/consignor and the carrier.
Dealing with unanticipated interruptions carries a heavy price for all transport providers as they require manual intervention, while also having hidden impacts that are hard to articulate or measure. I am talking in this instance about the drivers and the teams in the traffic offices that have to pull themselves through these issues on a daily basis. This is the reason that unlike warehousing and many supply chain operations, transport planning and operations cannot be automated by a mechanised work force: human error ultimately requires human intervention to obtain a satisfactory resolution.
Here I will go through the information a transport provider needs in order to carry out a collection and delivery that allows for the greatest chance to do these right, first time.
This information is not overly complicated to obtain, yet it is ultimately the responsibility to those booking the transport to provide it all to the carrier. Similarly, as the party contracting the haulier, it is worth your while to ensure that your own customer (be they the shipper/consignor or consignee) is aware that it is their responsibility to provide you with all the required information concerning their site/collection/delivery point. You can then pass this information to the carrier, and avoid incurring any additional delivery charges, such as wasted journeys or the supplying of unexpected transport requirements, that inevitably lead to those unpleasant conversations regarding who will take the hit and pay said charges.
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Senders Details:
This is the easy bit, or it should be! Make it easy for your transport provider to identify who you are and have all the information in one place.
Collection Details:
We often see collections failing for reasons that could be easily prevented. For example:
- Opening times not stated in the booking and driver shows up at 1645hrs not knowing that the consignor closed at 1600hrs.
- No collection reference provided.
- Requires a contact name as no one knows anything about the collection.
- Restriction for HGV vehicles – the collection point can only be accessed with an 18-tonne vehicle or smaller.
Depending on which company you work with and other factors such company policy, driver behaviour, or whether your chosen carrier is using their own vehicles or subcontracting, you may or may not be notified of issues as they happen. In any case, dealing with such issues is a burden that can highjack your day and could possibly penalise you financially as well as delaying the delivery to the end user.
Delivery Details:
When you are crossing international borders, this is when things can get tricky. In fact, getting hold of the information from your consignee/clients in the domestic market should be easy, yet will become more challenging with a consignee that could be in Paris, Bucharest or Milan. Moreover, you often will be speaking with the purchasing department of a company rather than their goods-in/operations team, which then adds a layer of complexity when trying to resolve a problem as it happens.
From experience, this is the part most overlooked and inevitably where most failures occur. Gathering good logistics information can be daunting, especially when you even face challenges from consignees who may not appreciate or understand why you need it. They might say, ‘We have received your products for the past 10 years and never had an issue!’
This maybe, but it is unlikely your consignee would remember the times that the driver turned up when they were at lunch, or arrived on Fridays when they closed early. What about the local depot going bust and someone else taking over? What about the regular driver retiring and an agency driver taking over the delivery route? While it is good practice to ensure you already possess all the consignee’s delivery requirements before even shipping the first order, it is also worth while for both yourself and the consignee to clarify this information even after a prolonged period of working together. Such proactivity will be much less damaging and inconvenient for all parties than the fire-fighting and delays caused by lack of communication. Having such information is also important should you wish to change your transport provider, or if you are using Freight Forwarders who may be using a range of different carriers/drivers to deliver even to your regular customers.
It is also important to bear in mind that when you send a pallet to a different country with a pallet network system, the operator in the country of origins loses control. Most companies haven’t got the tracking capabilities or the level of systems integration to flag live exceptions as described above. It gets worse with some of the largest integrators, as they are even not permitted to call their counterpart abroad unless escalated by management. The reason for this is that everything must be done by email to try to be as consistent as possible and avoid people jumping the queue as those individuals spend their day dealing with exceptions.
Goods Details:
By completing information in this section you will avoid difficulties down the line either in back office (invoicing ref) or insurance claims. Some of the topics that I feel get left out are often the commodity (type of product carried) and its value. Carriers are entitled to know what they are carrying and its cost, as it can lead to insurance issues if they were not aware of carrying specific products or high-value goods. Being transparent will also lead to the carrier being more responsible with your load and probably offer other delivery options or extra insurance to maximise the security of the load and decrease your exposure.
Dimensions of goods are very important (especially the height if the delivery point has vehicle size restrictions/tail lift requirements) – linehaul vehicles along with collection and delivery fleets are planned to go out full overnight and are planned on computer without looking at the freight physically. If you don’t clearly declare the dimensions of an oversized pallet or forget to mention that the freight is not stackable, it can lead to your goods staying on deck for an extra day at a pallet network hub.
Make sure you are also really clear about the service you require – most frequently being full load, pallet network, groupage-partload – alongside the service level that the carrier offers. You could find out at your own expenses that some providers do not guarantee transit time on their pallet network service, which can get complicated when escalating an issue with a transit delay.
On the subject of about transparency, carriers will appreciate to know about specific orders that are very important. It could be because you are in a contract renewal phase with that consignee/clients and that you cannot afford any slip up, or this order is going out for a production line that works just in time. Too often do carriers find out, at the time of informing their client of a delay, that this particular order is for a production run and that there will be thousands of pounds worth of fines for every hour the line is on stop.
Conclusion
When we think about exceptions/issues in isolation, it doesn’t sound like a great deal but if we put it in perspective it could look this:
A driver is planned to make 6 deliveries and 10 collections. The driver had 2 issues in the morning, one about a missing reference were he had to wait 30 minutes for the reference to be communicated and one that he couldn’t attempt because there was a restriction on vehicles above 18-tonnes. yet he tried to find an alternative access route without any luck and lost 45 minutes.
In the afternoon, everything goes okay, with just a few collections being a bit slow because there were other vehicles on site. Thus the driver lost 1 hour and 15 minutes in the morning, which in addition to the slow turn around at collection points in the afternoon resulted in him missing 2 collections, as both would have been closed by the time he arrived with them.
The traffic office is frustrated as 2 orders aren’t picked, and these order will now miss the weekly departure to Poland. The driver also isn’t happy once again, as these types of issues happen daily. Moreover, the clients that didn’t get their collections feel like their carrier doesn’t take them seriously.
Here two minor errors based on the lack of simple information regarding a reference and site vehicle restrictions have resulted in issues for not only those who did not provide the information, but for the carrier and the carrier’s other customers, ultimately undermining multiple relationships.
Or, an alternative example:
This is a story of a customer shipping 4000 pallets to France. 70% of the orders had the instructions to be booked in by the local depot prior to deliver. 3 months later, the Operation Director isn’t happy as Sales isn’t happy, the stores in France are all complaining about excessive lead times.
The carrier explains that there is little they can do. They cannot deliver until the delivery booking is made, and some days the store doesn’t answer their calls so the depot then tries to make a booking the following day.
After further investigation, it is ascertained that the instructions of booking-in the deliveries had been given by the Buyer European Sales Director, and he thought it would be a good idea for the stores to know that the pallets were on their way. Little did he know that he would increase the transit time by up to 48 hours.
A week later, all booking-in instructions were removed and that relationship between carrier, client and end-user continued happily ever after.
I genuinely believe that we can improve standards, improve how the industry is perceived and improve delivery performance by simply providing the best information possible and keep it updated regularly. Here, as always, communication is the key to happy business relationships.
Your faithfully,
Jean-Philippe Guérin
