If you are a company that gets LTL freight quotes 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 and Part II. And make sure to check out our freight shipping guide for more info!
PRO Report / Pickup Report
LTL pickups are much more likely to be missed than a full truckload pickup. Your broker needs to be on top of all of your shipments and figure out what didn’t pickup that was supposed to or what did pickup but was handed off with the incorrect paperwork.
This audit could go by several names, but we internally call it the PRO report because the first check is to make sure that all shipments that were supposed to pickup the previous day have a PRO number (tracking number).
Most brokers will schedule the pickup, and after making sure all all parties have the correct documentation (bill of ladings), will move on to the next shipment. This causes issues when pickups are missed, as many times information between the shipper and the carrier can be muddled and contradictory. Oftentimes the broker will have no idea that a pickup was missed until the customer eventually informs them.
As a full service broker, we take responsibility for our customer’s LTL shipments from origin to destination. The PRO report is one of our greatest and most unique tools in that we use it to identify any possible delays from the previous day’s shipments. With this knowledge we can quickly solve the problems presented at the pickup and make sure the shipment is not missed a second time, thereby avoiding further delays.
Missed pickups affect all LTL carriers but the most common reasons for a missed pickup are tardiness on the part of the driver, trucks filling with freight earlier than expected, and dispatcher driver miscommunications. Rather than just notifying our account management team of missed pickups, our PRO report team speaks to dispatchers, carrier customer service agents, and terminal managers to determine the true reason for the missed pickup, and the best action to remedy the situation and get your freight picked up and in transit.
This daily process allows us to focus on finding pickup patterns for customer locations as well as carrier habits. This process helps us cut down on the number of missed pickups as we highlight patterns of misses, further enabling us to solve pickup issues before they even arise.
A great freight broker is always proactively handling issues before they become customer delays, and the PRO report is our most effective and detailed tool in cutting down on missed pickups.