Providing Waves of Highly Responsive Carriers
Tucker Company Worldwide believes in fostering close, profitable and long-term contractual relationships with motor carriers, air and intermodal service providers. Some carriers have served us and our customers for decades. These relationships work because we and our contracted carriers understand what the other party needs to succeed. Carriers know Tucker has been in business nearly 50 years and has a reputation for integrity and professionalism. By tendering to our carriers freight that they want, from hundreds of our customers and by 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 Performance
Shippers often say, “I can control my on-time performance better when I deal with a carrier direct.” At Tucker we believe that is not true, unless one invests in personnel and systems like 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. True performance 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 IT 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 IT budget.
We have carefully screened, interviewed and contracted with over 6000 carriers. Why is it that we only have about 2000 of them active with us today?
One major reason for this is that even after our extensive and proprietary 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.
In seconds we can tell you, our 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 performance at pick up and destination because we track it. Few if any firms do that.
Why is all this important? If you can not quantify these things for yourself, then you can not objectively measure your performance.
Our Carrier Selection Process
While Corporate America continually decreases the number of carriers they use, our philosophy has always been 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 near 100% 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
Tucker’s Risk Management Department personnel, supervised by our Vice President Operations ensure that before Tucker Company Worldwide tenders freight to any carrier, the carrier must satisfy each of the following criteria, among other things:
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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 holder |
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Carrier must sign a contract with Tucker Company Worldwide; further detailing service & legal requirements Note: Tucker’s Carrier Contract is Available for Customer Review |
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.
Most carriers offer satellite tracking. Downloading this data has made our job of tracing easier and allows us to track the exact location of each truck. Nearly every carrier has cell phone technology, allowing driver contact in an instant. Very few still have no in-cab communication and rely on traditional means (the pay phone!), however this group is disappearing quickly in today’s demanding marketplace.
Tucker Company Worldwide’s system works for all types of carriers. To keep us and our customers advised of delays, we require that carriers we use encourage their drivers place check calls into us, on our toll free number before and after pickup, before and after delivery and if they run into problems or delays.
This way we can help track shipment progress. Our tracing department is speaking with our carriers’ dispatchers and drivers concerning every load and developing comprehensive tracking information. All this information is keyed into our system.
Tucker Customer Service and our Tracing Department work independently of each another, 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 an activity 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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* Any reference to “our carrier” is meant to imply “those carriers with whom Tucker has a written and signed contract and a business relationship” and does not imply Tucker has any ownership interest in, or any joint venture with the carrier. |
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