The Delivery Report: Getting LTL Delivered Since 2009

The FreightPros Delivery Report is a daily report we run to make sure our LTL shipments in transit are delivered in a timely manner. It’s just another aspect of our FreightPros world class customer service, and Logan does a quick video overview primed for watching here!

For more information check out our FREE Freight Papers, as well as our LTL shipping blog and The Beginner’s Guide to Freight Shipping.

Hello, my name is Logan Theissen and I do content creation here at FreightPros. I write our blogs, freight papers, as well as doing some SEO website stuff. But today, we’re going to talk about the delivery report, something I’m quite familiar with from my days as a solutions specialist. As you can see to my right, your left, there are five steps in the delivery report. We’re going to go through each one individual, explain what it is, what it accomplishes, and why we think it’s pretty unique. So let’s get started.

The first step in our delivery report is the TMS. This stands for Transportation Management System, and what it does is basically run everything we do here, LTL shipping-wise. It allows us to schedule pickups, to book shipments, to take shipments that are already in transit and trace them and track them. We can create our own BOLs. We can get addresses and information saved for our customers, and different logins. All sorts of stuff. It’s basically what we run most of our LTL through. It’s got all the information that we need at our fingertips. If you’ve ever seen the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the TMS is kind of like our Hal. 

The second step in our delivery report is the filter we have set up in our TMS. What this filter does is it alerts us to all that shipments that did not deliver on the estimated day it was supposed to deliver. This way we can identify which shipments were late, which shipments have not delivered when they were supposed to, and from there we can begin the process of the delivery report.

The third step, as you can see, is Salesforce. If you’re not familiar with Salesforce it’s quite a popular tool, it’s software that we use here, and like TMS it is also quite wide-ranging. You can do a lot of different things with it. It acts for us as a sort of customer database; it goes hand in hand with TMS. It runs our invoices, it runs all sorts of information for us especially for our solution specialists; they really find it quite helpful. In regard to the delivery report and Salesforce, once we figure out that a shipment is late and has not been delivered in a timely manner we create a case for it in Salesforce. This is kind of our home base to make sure the issue is dealt with and handled, and concluded. 

The fourth step in our delivery report is the customer. Once we figure out that the shipment has been delayed, and we figure out why it’s been delayed, and what we’re going to do about it to speed it up, to catch it back up, we let our customers know – just keeping them in the loop. If you’re at all familiar with LTL you understand that delays do sometimes happen, it’s not really the end of the world. You know, we like to think that we’re handling your freight, we’re a total third party, and we like to think that our customers trust us. We want them to trust us. So part of that is communication, and keeping those lines open, and letting our customers know that, yes, the freight might be late but we’re aware of it, we’re handling it, and this is how we’re going to solve the problem. 

The final step of the delivery report is the follow up. After we’ve contacted the carrier to figure out why the freight is late and when it’s going to be delivered, after we’ve contacted the customer and let them know the freight is late and this is what we’re doing to fix the problem, the next couple days are follow up. We continue to make contact with the carrier, continue to make contact with the customer, until the freight is delivered and we have a delivery receipt or POD – proof of delivery – in hand. We make sure that the freight has been delivered to the correct location and that it hasn’t been damaged, or lost. From there we can close the Salesforce case, contact the customer and let them know that everything is fine, let them know that the freight has been delivered, and that the case has been closed. 

So that’s the bare bones of the delivery report. Obviously, there are more specific things that happen on a case by case basis, but overall those are the five steps that go into our daily delivery report here at FreightPros. We think it’s pretty unique and it allows us to keep our customers happy, and maintain good relationships with the carriers so that they’re not upset with us, we’re not upset with them, and everything is going as smoothly as it can in regard to the LTL shipping. 

Once again, my name is Logan. I usually do content creation, but you should be seeing more of me in some upcoming videos that we have. Don’t hesitate to call us, email us, comment on the blogs, read the freight papers, and let us know what you think.

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