Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. A year or two ago, when many shippers locked into freight contracts in advance of the Mother of All Capacity Crunches, they\u00a0probably felt pretty good\u00a0 about their situation.<\/p>\n
Now, with conditions far less “crunched” than expected–some may say Charmin soft–shippers are looking for an alternative to their above-market contract rate, which has them\u00a0leaving money on the table.<\/p>\n
Based on news this week, uShip data shows shoppers are finding better, non-contract rates online. In fact, its LTL instant-rate marketplace is up 228 percent in Q1 2016 compared to the same period last year as shippers circumvented standing rates in favor of carrier-direct pricing.<\/p>\n
uShip<\/a> also announced that UPS Freight\u00ae has been added to its roster of 30+ national and regional LTL carriers, including the nation\u2019s top five \u2014 FedEx Freight\u00ae, XPO Logistics, YRC Freight, Old Dominion Freight Line and UPS Freight \u2014 offering direct, instantly-bookable quotes. uShip\u2019s LTL marketplace now features rates from a vast majority of capacity in the $35.1 billion LTL market, according to SJ Consulting Group, Inc.<\/p>\n including the countries top 5–FedEx Freight, XPO Logistics, YRC Freight, Old Dominion Freight Line and UPS Freight.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the truckload industry is struggling to hold rates due to overcapacity, the LTL carriers are getting rate increases resulting from better capacity management and shift in pricing from honor system to actual shipment characteristics. In addition, the LTL carriers have gotten better at managing broker relationships and tapping into electronic marketplaces like uShip that directly connect carriers and shippers at a lower cost generating higher profit margins and expanding the LTL industry by attracting a new customer base,\u201d says Satish Jindel, President, SJ Consulting Group, Inc.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now shippers hold the pricing power \u2014 and they shouldn\u2019t be afraid to flex it,\u201d says Jim Bramlett, senior vice president, SMB at uShip. \u201cThe uShip LTL marketplace<\/a> gives shippers, especially small-to-medium-sized businesses, direct access to market rates and shipping technology they may not otherwise have, especially as LTL carriers claim contract rates are actually increasing by 3 to 5 percent. Shippers can now simply go online to directly book with top carriers like UPS Freight and many others.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is totally different from using a broker, where they\u2019ve got a blanket rate or customer specific pricing,\u201d uShip Chief Marketing Officer Dick Metzler\u00a0told the Journal of Commerce<\/a>. \u201cThis is testing the market everyday. It\u2019s a different way of managing LTL freight. It just hadn\u2019t been done so much before.\u201d<\/p>\n uShip has a total of 3.5 million registered shipping customers, including over 350,000 self-identified business shippers. One example is a maker of high-performance 3D printers that saved 20 percent on its LTL shipping costs after discovering uShip. Other shippers \u2014 from auto parts dealers to LED light producers to pet food distributors \u2014 are saving anywhere from 15 to 30 percent by switching to uShip, and commonly report substantial time savings by shifting shipping operations from phone calls to online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. A year or two ago, when many shippers locked into freight contracts in advance of the Mother of All Capacity Crunches, they\u00a0probably felt pretty good\u00a0 about their situation. Now, with conditions far less “crunched” than expected–some may say Charmin soft–shippers are looking for an alternative… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":4508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-shipping"],"acf":{"blog_post_content":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ushipblogsubd.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Shippers can get direct, instant rates from as many as 30 top LTL carriers,<\/h2>\n