If you are a company that ships LTL freight and uses a freight broker, or are currently going carrier direct and wondering why you would consider using a broker, the following series will highlight some services that every great broker should provide. Check out Part I of this LTL shipping series and don’t forget to download our freight shipping guide for free.

Manually Booking Shipments

You are probably already wondering, “Wait, why would a broker manually book freight shipments? My broker already does it all electronically…isn’t that better?” Guess what, our online software does allow us to electronically book pickups with almost all of our LTL carriers, but we’ve found that the process isn’t reliable. Therefore, we call in each of our pickups.

Making sure that your freight pickups are scheduled and completed is one of the most obvious and important jobs a freight broker has. Most freight brokers use the EDI automated system to book pickups. EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange and is used to automatically send pickup information from the broker to the carrier.

Though this automated system is convenient, it is also inherently flawed. There are no confirmations that the request was received and pickup requests are commonly dropped or incomplete.

There’s nothing worse than calling in to an LTL carrier to check on a missed pickup and being told that they never received the pickup in their system, even though you know you sent the request over via EDI. When you’re dealing with freight shipping, missed or dropped pickups lead to delays and angry customers – two things your broker should be ferociously avoiding.

At FreightPros we’ve developed our own system that eliminates the uncertainty that comes with the broker EDI booking system. For each pickup, our Pros take the time to call the dispatcher and personally confirm all the relevant information.

We take dispatcher’s names, numbers, and pickup confirmations before we hang up the phone, insuring pickups aren’t missed or forgotten. This attention to detail drastically cuts down on the number of missed pickups, generating better transit times with fewer delays. If your current broker relies solely on an electronic booking method, then you definitely are not getting the most reliable method of pickup scheduling for your freight shipments.