Updated on December 22, 2022
As a merchant, your logistics needs expand beyond eCommerce fulfillment. You need to get your inventory from ports, store pallets of inventory, and ship inventory to businesses.
To complete these necessary-but-tedious tasks, you often have to coordinate across many systems and businesses. This manual coordination is time-consuming, results in delays, and is often expensive—and it’s a major issue that needs to be solved so you can streamline logistics and operations.
In 2022, we’re introducing logistics services to fix this broken ecosystem. All of these services can be used whether or not you use Deliverr for eCommerce fulfillment. These services can be mixed and matched to create your own logistics infrastructure.
Today, we’re announcing the first of these logistics services, Deliverr Freight—a fast, affordable, and hassle-free solution for all your transportation needs.
Freight (moving inventory through trucks) is a core need for all merchants. Yet the current ecosystem of freight services requires a lot of coordination, offers limited visibility, and lacks guarantees. The current freight ecosystem also comes with:
• No time-definite delivery: The coordination of various businesses makes it hard to understand where your freight is, when it will arrive, and if it will arrive on time.
• Highly manual coordination: Each party involved might have a different approach to transporting freight, making it difficult to coordinate processes quickly and efficiently.
• High price: Pricing becomes opaque and variable when multiple vendors are involved. This makes it difficult to select optimal freight services and get a fair price.
Deliverr Freight utilizes our expansive physical infrastructure, high visibility tracking and routing technology, and strong processes to provide a simplified freight solution with three key pillars:
1. Hassle-free service: We take the onus off of you to get your products where they need to be, communicating with the right parties at every step of the way.
2. Clear and competitive pricing: Get a clear comprehensive quote prior to signing up for Deliverr Freight that best matches your business needs, with full transparency around updates.
3. Fast and predictable transit times: Know where your shipments are and when they’re expected to arrive.
Read on to learn more about our three Freight services and how you can get started today.
1. Drayage and Transloading
Drayage is when a shipping container is transported from a port to an intermediate destination (e.g., a warehouse near the port of entry).
Transloading is the process of unloading freight from one mode of transportation and re-loading it onto another. In drayage, the shipping container is owned by the cargo ship and must be returned to the port within a tight window (or the freight owner will face a charge). As such, you’ll typically want to transload freight from a 20’ or 40’ container to a 53’ trailer for transportation to the final destination.
The status quo for drayage and transloading
The existing model for drayage and transloading is complex, slow, and places a burden on you to handle all processes—as seen in the chart below:
With other drayage and transloading processes, you’re responsible for coordinating with a freight forwarder to move containers to a port of entry. While the freight forwarder will typically source the drayman, you still need to sync with both parties to get the container picked up from the port. Within this process, you’re also responsible for:
• Arranging for a warehouse where the container can be taken and offloaded (this requires coordination with the drayman and warehouse).
• Handling transload by working with a freight broker to arrange a carrier to take the freight to its final destination.
• Scheduling a warehouse team to offload and re-load freight, and coordinating with a broker, carrier, and the warehouse to make sure the transload is executed on time.
Deliverr Freight solves the complexities of drayage and transloading
Deliverr’s Drayage and Transloading Freight model simplifies the process by taking on the responsibility of coordinating between freight forwarders, drayman, and warehouses. By doing so, we’re able to reduce your costs, cut out delays, and allow you to know where your shipments are during the process.
You just need to provide us with the container number, freight forwarder’s contact information, and its final destination and we’ll arrange for drayage to one of our local facilities. From there, we’ll transload the freight and arrange transportation to its final destination. You’ll have full visibility of your containers throughout the process.
Speak with a rep about Drayage & Transloading
2. Time Guaranteed LTL
LTL, or less than truckload, refers to freight shipments that are six pallets or less. In many cases, you’ll need to move a small amount of inventory but do not have enough to book an entire truck (aka FTL or full truckload).
The status quo for LTL
For both you and the carrier, LTL shipments are a huge burden leading to endless headaches.
The carrier wants to be able to capture as much business as possible by offering delivery to customers in any location no matter the distance. At the same time, they want to maximize utilization by aggregating LTL orders that are headed in the same direction onto a single truck, as well as avoiding dropping off at a destination where there are no other shipments to pick up.
In order for this work, a carrier operates a network of depots or terminals across the country. When an order comes in, a driver will pick up your freight and bring it to a local depot, where it’s pooled with other freight headed in the same direction. This freight is then sent to the next depot towards the destination, and the process is repeated multiple times. The freight may even be loaded onto another mode of transportation (e.g., rail).
This complex process leaves room for error, including:
• Increased risk of the freight being dropped or damaged.
• Opportunity for delay.
• Freight getting buried in the back of a depot for long periods of time.
• Freight being misplaced or forgotten by the carrier.
How Deliverr Time Guaranteed LTL solves these challenges
Deliverr’s Time Guaranteed LTL Freight model empowers you to confidently plan LTL shipments by ensuring a timely arrival date of freight. Deliverr can do this by leveraging our powerful fulfillment network to predictably transport your freight.
With Deliverr Time Guaranteed LTL, we’ll pick up any number of pallets within a 50-mile radius of our two coastal hubs in New Jersey and Los Angeles.
We’ll then transport the pallets to one of our metro hubs in Chicago, Dallas Fort Worth, Atlanta, New Jersey, or Los Angeles.
From there, we can deliver the freight to any location within a 50-mile radius. By providing this end-to-end delivery, we can guarantee that the freight will arrive on time, and reduce the risk of overages, shortages, and damages (If for any reason your Time Guaranteed LTL Freight shipment arrives after the promised delivery date, you will receive a full refund as a Deliverr Freight credit).
Speak with a rep about Time Guaranteed LTL
3. Truckload Services
Deliverr Truckload Services offers standard LTL (less than truckload) and FTL (full truckload) freight shipment services. Within this program, we can transport raw production materials, handle B2B distribution across the U.S., and even transfer all your inventory from one warehouse to another. Whatever the task may be, our team has a solution.
By utilizing our vast network of carriers, we’re able to provide quick, easy, and competitive pricing to move your goods to and from any location.
Speak with a rep about Truckload Services
Get started with Deliverr Freight services today
Ready to start using Deliverr Freight? Learn more here or fill out this form to meet with a logistics expert.
