Why Maintaining Carrier Relationships is Crucial for Your Business

Carriers are necessary to set up and maintain a good supply chain. You want to ensure you are on good terms with your carriers! To explain this further, let's examine why maintaining carrier relationships is crucial for your business.

Quick problems resolution

You can rest easy knowing your goods are in the right hands.

When you are doing business, no matter the risk management tools you use, you will eventually face a problem that sets you back. At that point, the only thing you can do is try to respond quickly. However, often things don't just depend on you. That is especially true when a problem crops up with the transportation of your goods. In such a scenario, you need your carrier's support to resolve everything promptly. And yet, if you are not on good terms with the carrier in question, you might find yourself stonewalled. They are often not obligated to go out of their way to assist you, and trying to force the issue can easily backfire. That is particularly pertinent if the problem is on your end. In such cases, maintaining carrier relationships is crucial for your business.

Enhanced co-operation with your carriers

It's much easier to arrange pickup and dropout times for your goods.

Another reason why maintaining carrier relationships is crucial for your business is because it allows for a deeper level of cooperation. Sometimes you must adjust your delivery schedule or alter the volume of goods you need to transport quickly. In normal circumstances, this is extremely difficult since such changes also seriously affect the carrier handling the transport. As a result, your quest will be denied, or you might not even be able to reach out at all! Carriers with poor relationships with the people they work for simply stick to the pre-arranged terms with minimal communication. If anything pops up you need assistance with, you will immediately hit a dead end. If your relationship is strong, they'll at least attempt to help, or maybe even offer you a discount on some of their services.

Longer carrier retention

Of course, another reason to put effort into nurturing your relationship with your carriers is to ensure carrier retention. Genuinely, businesses rely on quality carriers rather than vice versa. A carrier with a stellar reputation and reasonable prices is top-rated on the market since they are crucial to developing a solid supply chain strategy. A reliable carrier also significantly reduces transportation risks, such as the chance of your goods arriving damaged at their destination. As such, carriers like this typically have their pick of the businesses they want to cooperate with. If you don't have a good relationship with your carriers, they might not want to prolong their contract with you once your current agreements expire. That would force you to look for a new carrier, whose quality will likely be lower and prices higher.

Maintaining carrier relationships is crucial for your business, as they'll more readily make space for your goods.

Special care and consideration

One-size-fits-all is not a mentality that works well for businesses involved in logistics. Instead, you will often be forced to fine-tune your supply chain and mode of operation. Sometimes, this also means that you need to cooperate with your carriers to ensure everything runs smoothly. A good example of this is if you deal with sensitive or fragile goods. As the moving and storage experts from Ample Moving point out, you must handle items like this carefully to arrive at their destination safely. If you do not have a good relationship with your carriers, they might not be willing to entertain your demands. Eventually, this might force you to look for new carriers altogether. You can expect your profit margins to dip slightly because the quality of your goods will be lower due to poor transport conditions.

Make your goods a higher priority

Getting special services or treatment might be impossible, but if you maintain a good carrier relationship, they will look out for you at the very least! Take the following scenario as an example; if you have a good relationship with your carrier, they might unload your goods into a more easy-to-reach spot. Alternatively, your shipping container will be in the same position. That means that while other businesses are forced to wait for other goods to be unloaded, you'd be among the first few to receive yours. In turn, you can shave off a ton of time in your delivery process instead of worrying about making your deadlines due to delays! That is just one example, and there are many other minor benefits to having a good relationship with your carrier.

Access to valuable tips and data

Maintaining carrier relationships is crucial for your business because it can grant you access to handy tips and data. You see, carriers have access to a lot of data about your goods and even other aspects of delivery, which they can share with you. Especially things like average order accuracy, the percentage of items that arrive damaged, how accurate documentation is on average, etc. However, most carriers are in no way obligated to share this data with you. Even if it would assist you with setting professional standards for your logistics, they have no real reason to go out of their way for you. If your relationship with your carriers is thorny, they'll naturally refuse to assist you. On the other hand, if you manage to maintain a harmonious relationship, they'll likely be willing to share more of their data.

For a good and healthy relationship with your carrier

Now that you know why maintaining carrier relationships is crucial for your business, you can try to improve yours! If you treat your carriers with care and respect, you can develop mutually beneficial relationships that will last for a long time. Remember that this means you must be mindful of their needs, too! So, do not be impatient or rude in carrier-facing dealings.