“Choose your partner well … because from them you will gain 90 percent of all of your happiness or 90 percent of all of your misery,” my dad always said. That wisdom is so very true in the freight industry because we are vitally reliant on each partner (shipper, broker, carrier) doing their part to help freight get to the destination. When you think of the market conditions in 2018 (and likely 2019), those that had great partnerships weathered the storm and those that did not may still be looking for employment.
The year of 2019 will most certainly be a year that we rethink and reconsider what a true freight partnership looks like when it comes to the velocity of freight. This “rethinking” partnerships will be a necessary key to maintaining shipping commitments because the days where one party leverages the other’s margin to get a “short-term” budget outcome are disappearing. They are disappearing because they do not work in today’s freight environment.
What does look like success is becoming a “strategic partner” with each player in the process and collaboratively working toward a benefit for each other. Sounds like utopia, but it is happening. Shippers commented at CSCMP that fulfilling customer delivery commitments could only be gained by being a collaborative partner with their 3PLs and carriers, and that the key to success was to fundamentally rethink how to create these partnerships to ensure their freight is delivered on time.
Shippers stated they want to be more strategic in their relationships with their freight partners — and that is good for shippers and all in the freight industry.
With all that continues to change with data science, automation, and predictive freight matching, it seems the relationship via great partnership still is the most valuable asset a company can build.