Inbound Freight Management

If your inbound freight is currently managed by your suppliers, you are probably overpaying at above-market prices due to the following factors:

• Individual suppliers lack leverage in the freight market
• Suppliers lack the incentive to find low-cost freight options
• Suppliers mark up freight as a profit center

Unfortunately, companies do this because their purchasing departments lack resources, or their logistics departments are focused on outbound finished goods shipping to their customers. At PLS, our focus is to optimize freight cost savings and maintain successful on-time pickups and deliveries for your business. Managing your own inbound shipments can bring immediate freight savings, but the most significant advantage of PLS’ inbound logistics solution is the overall increase in control of your supply chain.

Why partner with PLS?

Proper inbound freight management can mitigate unwanted costs and help businesses get more visibility into inbound shipping processes. Let’s take a look at the case study of one of our customers, who saved a substantial amount of costs after switching to PLS’ inbound management.

A customer, engaged in mining, exploration, and refining with multiple locations across strategic regions, has previously relied on vendors to manage transportation of their supplies and capital equipment. Vendors have always arranged and paid for transportation, and the mark up was 15 – 50% with little to no shipment visibility. Significant costs were associated with delayed deliveries, along with no visibility of transportation spend.

Financial impacts after partnering with PLS:

• 15% savings on LTL
• 25% savings on most common truckload lanes
• Gained control of transportation
• Increased shipment visibility and detailed cost visibility
• Increased bandwidth/resources while saving money
• Gained the ability to create an accurate budget on large capital expenditure project transportation costs

Solutions included the following:

• PLS set up a dedicated account management team
• PLS procured highly qualified and cost-effective carriers
• PLS provided market insight to make strategic changes in the operations
• PLS provided daily updates on all shipments, segmented by project
• PLS coded invoices to allow them to properly allocate and budget transportation costs

We provide a wide range of inbound freight management services:

• Inbound shipment planning (flatbed, LTL and van)
• Vendor compliance management
• Carrier rate negotiation
• Monitoring of safety, insurance, and performance
• Automated tendering and dispatch
• Dock scheduling
• Tracking to shipment, part number level
• Expediting and event management
• Spot lane rate quotes
• Freight audit/payment
• Claims management
• Standard and customized reporting

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