Parcel And Freight Discounts
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Today we’re discussing some of the top misconceptions keeping shippers from a best-in-class carrier agreement. Let’s start by defining what a best-in-class carrier agreement is. What...

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Editor's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: January 18, 2016 Everyone's heard of Newton's Universal Laws of Motion. Today we’re discussing Lojistic's laws of parcel negotiation. ...

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Editor's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: March 15, 2013 In the parcel world, the terms freight invoices and bills of lading are used frequently. But what is the difference? ...

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Editor's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: March 19, 2011 FedEx and UPS are a modern-day oligopoly. Let’s explain what that means. ...

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Publisher's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: May 1, 2017 In this post, we’ll help you understand how to become a FedEx and UPS power user. Let's start at the beginning with what FedEx and UPS power users are. ...

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Peak shipping season is here and to ensure your packages are delivered in time for the Holidays, download our Holiday Shipping Deadline Calendar below. In addition, please be aware of this year’s Peak Season surcharges. On October 1, 2019, UPS implemented the following Peak Season surcharges: ...

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It's that time of year once again. UPS & FedEx are dishing out another costly general price increase to small parcel shippers effective December 29, 2019 for UPS and January 6, 2020 for FedEx. It is important to understand that the announced UPS & FedEx rate increases are only averages and the impact on your company could vary greatly. Over the past decade (2010-2020), UPS an...

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Parcel Carriers: Breaking it Down The two primary parcel carriers offer some innovative billing tools on their websites. And I'm speaking specifically about FedEx and UPS. I'll talk about them one at a time. For FedEx, they offer a program available on their website that you need to sign up for. They call it FedEx Billing Online. They designed it to give you the ability to...

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UPS and FedEx Billing Insights from the Pros Hey, guys, Rich with Lojistic here. I'm here to talk about UPS and FedEx billing with any of you that are still on paper invoices. Federal Express and UPS both offer online services. This will allow you to build in ...

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Parcel Negotiation: Saving Money is Smart So, today, I'm talking about parcel contract negotiation. More specific is the role that analytics play in that process. And of how it can be helpful to help you get the best possible contract with UPS and FedEx and ...

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Lowering Shipping Rates: Some Basics to Remember Here are some things to keep in mind about lowering FedEx shipping rates. The clearest, easiest way is to renegotiate the contract. So, to do to lower your FedEx rates is to take account the timeframe in which you last negotiated your contract. As long as it's withi...

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Freight Payment Issues Explained It is primary to ensure that all your freight payment invoices are being audited. Much of it starts with negotiating the carrier pricing that you received to begin with. Everything that follows is a result of that contract. What you need to make sure is that all your carriers adhe...

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Freight Bill Payment Improved with Lojistic Software Lojistic helps with freight bill payment in different ways. The primary way is how it consolidates all your invoices. It combines them from all your carriers into one spot. There's also often the difficulty of timing. Not to mention when bills are coming in, who they're coming in from. There are different pricing schemas...

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Parcel Audit Defined Parcel audit is auditing your weekly carrier invoices to make sure they're righteous. It also makes sure you're paying the right amount every week. The three things you need to look for in a parcel audit are: Results Visibility Analytics The audit itself is a pretty commoditized service. A ...

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Rate Negotiation Considerations Rate negotiation is an important thing for customers to understand. Customers ask, "What's the difference between the different types of negotiations?" And there is one specific term that we like to use sometimes and that's a rate ...

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Parcel Negotiation Basics Parcel negotiation is the time of the year when you enter into a negotiation with a parcel carrier. It could be with a carrier like UPS or FedEx. What you're trying to do is get the best of what you can get out of the carrier from a rate persp...

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In a global economy you have internal/external pressures to maintain high levels of performance at the same time managing the costs between customers and carriers. The challenge is managing your parcel shipping costs while continuing to reflect the capabilities that makes your company truly unique and drive its value. These capabilities stand out as true differentiat...

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“I’m a really bad negotiator”, said no one ever.  Especially in logistics. Case in point, I was on a sales call last week and the gentleman responsible for negotiating the existing UPS and FedEx contracts for his company was VERY confident in his shrewd negotiation skills.  “My new parcel rates are amazing. I just negotiated a 9% savings with my incumbent p...

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Let's start right at the beginning. Most people don’t know what a parcel audit is. A parcel audit is the task of going through each and every shipping invoice to look at carrier service errors you can be refunded for. The process is extremely tedious and time consuming. This is where 3rd party parcel auditin...

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Over the past decade, UPS & FedEx have increased their Ground tariff rates 54.9% and their Air tariffs 61.8-66.1%. Those aren’t exactly small numbers. Adding insult to injury, these figures do not include the infamous Dimensional Weight pricing changes of 2011 and 2015… ouch! With the 2016 General Rate Increase right around the corner, equip yourself with these best practices to help mitig...

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Cost is a perennial concern in everything to do with logistics. Shipping and handling costs make up a major part of the money spent on logistics by most companies in a given year, and so, many efforts are undertaken to reduce shipping and handling costs by improving contract terms and optimizing carrier relationships. However, contro...

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Are you wondering how to determine shipping costs? Shipping costs are, of course, among the most important factors involved in determining the costs of your entire logistics operation. In order to make sure that you understand your costs and can plan for them in the future, you should standardize them to the extent possible. This requires a thorough, point-by-point review of the most basic operati...

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When it comes to 3rd party logistics, not every company is familiar with the considerations involved. There are many major third party logistics advantages, but capturing them means first finding the right 3rd party logistics company for you. In a field that is growing very fast, getting a handle on the world of 3PL is not necessarily easy. Still, it is worthwhile for you to delve into ...

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If your organization is serious about capturing true value from logistics, lifting it out of the service role and making it a true profit center for your business, you will have to take steps that many more conventional organizations would not bother with. In so doing, you stand to capture millions in savings and contribute to significant gains in your sales and revenue figures based on the excell...

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It’s reasonable to wonder if third party logistics services are truly worth it for your business. After all, you might have concerns that it will take some time to start up third party logistics for your organization. Third party logistics companies vary in quality and in terms of what they have to offer your bottom line. Plus, trusting third party logistics providers means giving a consultant a...

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Wondering about your true logistics costs? Logistics costs are mutable, not fixed, so any one category of logistic cost is subject to your enterprise’s own efforts. Logistic cost analysis is a crucial first step to finding any logistic cost that is out of step with the needs and expectations of your business. In fact, it is the first thing that you need to do in order to implement a truly compre...

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No matter how simple or relatively complex your logistics operations may be, there are certain logistics costs that you will have to be concerned with. Luckily, professionals in most industries will have the opportunity to turn these costs over to various carriers and other logistics services and will not have to concern themselves directly with things like the cost of fuel, long haul trucks, trai...

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Wondering how to reduce shipping costs? It is important to cut transportation costs in order to make your supply chain agile and ensure that your logistics efforts are sustainable. Many small and medium-sized businesses do not always realize the magnitude of cost savings as applied to logistics costs. When logistics costs are streamlined, a savings of even a few fractions of a penny per transactio...

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For all businesses that ships a constant amount of items, it’s important to note the changing fluctuations of the shipping world, whether it be the updates in new competitors, as we previously noted in our Amazon blog post, or the quarterly earnings calls.  These changes are important because they can help to prepare for and predict certain trends within future pricing and possible action the c...

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Reducing shipping costs has become an important point of discussion for many businesses with the recovering economic situation.  However, although it may seem easy to accomplish at first, the actual practice is much tougher to implement as businesses must question whether they need to cut services or shipment options.  The gre...

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When carriers determine discounts and incentives for their customers, they may utilize some similar tactics, but overall, they do not have a singular system to differentiate between one company to the next.  Therefore, they create custom, specific shipper strategies for pricing agreements and makes negotiating carrier discounts highly subjective. There are many different factors that the carriers...

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Billing errors on your shipping invoice may be a surprise to some companies. With the advancements in technology and the automated process of shipments, why would there be errors on UPS and FedEx invoices?  The problem is that mistakes do happen and are slipping by those companies that do not realize it.Why do billing errors happen? There are two main reasons: One, even though much of t...

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There are discounts available from UPS and FedEx for both small and large businesses.  These deals, however, are not standardized.  A company often must be knowledgeable of what level of discount is possible if they are to receive great shipping rates.  Many companies negotiating with shipping carriers will not successfully achieve best-in-class shipping rates due to a lack of information....

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Shipping with FedEx and UPS can be very costly. Over the last year, prices have risen substantially. However, there are some simple things that budget-conscious customers can do to discount FedEx and UPS shipping costs without sacrificing delivery speed. Use Third Party Insurance FedEx and UP...

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In the world of small parcel shipping there are largely only two service providers in the United States, UPS and FedEx. Many businesses feel strongly (often based on a prior negative experience) that the service of one carrier is far superior to the other. On the other hand, there do remain some businesses that are relatively neutral in the consideration of a UPS and FedEx service comparison. T...

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Contrary to what some may think, carriers do not have a uniform system for determining the level of shipping discounts and incentives offered to one shipper versus the next. Numerous variables contribute to the carrier’s process of extending any price better than their tariff rates. Certainly there are shipper characteristics that are commonly considered when a carrier is evaluating the level o...

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Accessorial charges that are assessed while a shipment is in-transit or upon its delivery can present an important cost management issue for businesses. Since many companies charge their customer for shipping when an order is placed, it is problematic when the actual shipping charges exceed expectations due to accessorial fees. With shipping costs that exceed the associated revenue collected from ...

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Accessorial fees refer to shipping costs that are additional to the base transportation charge. These charges seem to go up every year with new ones being added constantly. Recent fuel service charges for FedEx and UPS recently shot up a "wallet- emptying" 25 percent. Accessorial surcharges for extra, supplemental or special services can easily account for up to 40 percent of your overall freight...

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Every January UPS and FedEx tariff rates change. When comparing FedEx vs UPS rates, one has to consider contracted incentives relative to the carrier’s annual price increase. Your contract incentives will more than likely carry over from one year to the next; however, the incentives will now be appli...

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You'll find revenue-based incentives in most small parcel shipping contracts. UPS uses the term Portfolio Tier Incentives. FedEx refers to them as Earned FedEx Discounts. Basically, they amount to nothing more than a quantity or volume discount. Some shippers don't like revenue-based incentives; yet, managed properly, they can be fairly advantageous. Carriers like them because in decade...

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Parcel shipping contracts are becoming increasingly complex. Many of these contacts are written to confuse shippers and protect the carrier. The wording, created by lawyers, is designed to obfuscate the reader to the point where they simply give up, trust the oral explanation and the promised impact of any proposed freight discounts. It's no wonder so many shippers have engaged freight auditing co...

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Many companies will discount freight services on slower, ground shipments to save customers money and protect the environment. Whether companies discount freight services or charge their regular fees, shipping by seas can pose a threat to the world’s oceans and waterways. Shipping cont...

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Gas prices are up and so are UPS rates. But you can negotiate with UPS if you know how. When negotiating discount UPS rates it's important to establish a rapport with the manager at the local distribution center. After you have asked them to reduce shipping rates they and their pricing depa...

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Shipping costs are headed higher than a New York City skyscraper. No thanks to the high price of energy, which contributes to rising transportation costs.  Record high oil prices have offset decades of trade liberalization efforts. When you consider the rising cost of shipping raw materials and finished goods, distance to market and ...

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How you reduce shipping costs can impact the profitability of your business. As a business owner, you can opt to raise your prices to compensate for today's higher shipping costs.  But if you're smart, you'll avoid this trap, as it will make you less competitive in the long run. On t...

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