Tucker Company Worldwide believes in fostering close, profitable and long-term relationships with our carriers. Some carriers have served us for decades. These partnerships work because we both understand what the other party needs in order to succeed. Carriers know of Tucker’s 40+ years reputation for integrity and professionalism. By tendering to our carriers freight that they want, from dozens of our customers and by always paying within terms, we keep them motivated to serve.
Roughly 20% of our carrier base handles about 85% of our freight. This concentration of shipments to a relatively small group of carriers demonstrates the enormous volume we control. Additionally, very few of our carriers are among the nation’s largest fleets. We get much better performance from the big fleet’s competition. The other 80% of our carrier base is reserved for niche and irregular route moves, special projects, seasonal moves, dedicated operations and backup to our primary carriers.
Maximum Control
It is often said, “I can control freight better when I deal with a carrier direct.” That statement is a perception and is not reality, unless someone dedicates personnel and systems as we do.
Dealing “direct” does not automatically get you answers, service or productivity. We deal directly with carriers every day, tens of thousands of times per year. Control takes highly experienced people, communications and systems, focused full-time on managing freight.
We do not know a shipper anywhere who has the people, time, systems or resources to do it effectively. That is not changing. 100 percent of Tucker Company Worldwide’s MIS dollars go directly into improving our sophisticated freight management and communications system. Compare that to the low percentages of even the largest shippers’ dollars deployed in their transportation MIS budget.
We have carefully screened, interviewed and contracted with over 4000 carriers. Why is it that we only have about 15% of them active?
One major reason for this is that even after our extensive process of screening, interviewing and contracting with carriers, and the many detailed conversations and meetings along the way, our high service standards could not be satisfied.
When the screening is complete and the Tucker/Carrier contract is signed, our service professionals carefully test the performance of new carriers. We begin the testing by measuring new carrier performance on some non-time-critical or “easy” shipments before assigning them to more demanding freight.
In seconds we can tell you, the customer, Tucker’s on-time performance for your firm, or for Tucker corporate-wide. We can report it in percent of late pickups or deliveries, average minutes late; practically any way you wish. We know all of our carriers’ on time record at pick up and destination because we track it. Few if any firms can do that.
Why is all this important? If you can not quantify these things for yourself and can not answer these questions, then you can not possibly be in control of your carriers.
Our Carrier Selection Process
While corporate America continually decreases the number of carriers they use, our philosophy is to continually recruit new carriers in order to refine our services. Sometimes carriers’ performance levels drop, or more often they tend to change their traffic patterns due to the changing patterns of their largest customers.
Tucker has a proven 97%-plus on-time percentage at destination, across all freight types and modes. On many lanes we hit 100%. When you consider that we move freight for hundreds of customers with thousands of destinations, using roughly 600 different carriers, that statistic becomes quite remarkable. Some of our higher service demanding customers are routinely getting 99% and over. We won’t rest until we reach 100% across the board.
Minimum Qualification Checklist
Before Tucker Company Worldwide tenders freight to any carrier, the carrier must satisfy each of the following criteria.
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Carrier must have current DOT operating authority and we document it’s DOT safety rating |
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Carrier must have current Cargo & Liability Insurance, naming Tucker Company Worldwide as certificate bearer |
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Carrier must sign a contract with Tucker Company Worldwide; further detailing service & legal requirements |
This information gets entered into our information system and is held in hard copy at our offices. Expiration dates of contracts and insurance are entered as well. Weeks before expiration, our system prompts us to get updated paperwork, so you can be assured our files are current.
Communications
Carrier niches, services and levels of sophistication and communication vary. Therefore, our shipment tracing methods must vary in order to track them.
Many carriers have web sites offering satellite tracking. Downloading this data has made our job of tracing easier and allows us to track the exact location of each truck. Almost every carrier has cell phone technology, allowing driver contact in an instant. A few still have no in-cab communication and rely on traditional means (the pay phone!), however this group is shrinking fast in today’s demanding marketplace.
Tucker Company Worldwide’s system works for all types of carriers. We require that all our carriers have their drivers call us on our toll free number before and after pickup, before and after delivery and if they run into problems or delays.
In addition, our tracing department is speaking with our carriers’ dispatchers and each driver concerning every load and developing all tracking information. All this information is keyed into our system.
Tucker Dispatch and Tucker Tracing work independently of one another, each notifying the other if they see discrepancy in our logs. Every conversation with driver, dispatch, customer, receiver, etc., is logged under that shipment in our computer system. The logs for every shipment read like a short story of who said what to whom, and when.
Portion of a Carrier Activity Report
Every carrier we work with in a month receives this report. It is one way of measuring how responsive that carrier is to our needs. It also reinforces to the carrier how much freight and revenue they handle for us in a given month.
Our tracking system can retrieve logs and all other shipment information for loads up to four years in the past!
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