We Don't Contract Carriers for You, Here's Why
Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t offer discounted shipping rates. This ensures we provide the best shipping platform to our customers; mid- to enterprise-level shippers. If you fall into this category, read on to learn about our key considerations.
1. Shippers Should Have Unbiased Carrier Choice
We want to avoid influencing our customers’ carrier choices. If we promote certain carriers with discounted shipping rates, this could lead customers astray from carriers that better suit their shipping needs but don’t sell shipping labels to brokers.
2. Our Customers Would Have to Contract Carriers Directly Anyway
Working with brokers is only commercially interesting for the largest Express carriers. However, our customers predominantly use road carriers, accounting for about 80% of their shipments.
So, our customers would still need to establish contracts with their Parcel and Freight carriers. Since we can only partially take the burden off our customers regarding carrier contracts, they might as well negotiate their own agreements with Express carriers. This is especially true considering they have sufficient volume to do so.
3. Custom Carrier Integrations Should Create Value for Customers
We decide which carrier integration to build next based on what would add the most value for our customers. If customers ask for one carrier integration, we don’t want to consider building another first because we could profit from reselling that carrier’s shipping rates. We want to avoid putting ourselves in a position where there could be a conflict of interest regarding our custom carrier integration strategy.
4. Our Customers Are Better off Contracting Carriers Directly
We’re focused on adding value to our customers, not rent-seeking from shipping rates. Purchasing shipments through a broker is attractive for starting e-commerce companies. For other shippers, less so. Our platform is built with B2B shippers with a high daily shipping volume in mind. Shippers who fit this profile are better off negotiating contracts with carriers directly.
The only reason we see for contracting carriers in the future is to provide shippers without carrier contracts immediate access to our platform. This would temporarily tie them over as they hash things out with their intended carriers.
5. We Want to Provide Technical Solutions, not Intermediary Services
We love to problem-solve. What we don’t love is passing problems back and forth. This is what we’d be doing if we resold shipping rates.
Brokers act as an intermediary between shippers and carriers. If we resold shipping rates, we’d need a customer service desk to pass along questions, answers, and complaints between shippers and carriers. Call us crazy, but we’re not very excited about this prospect, especially if we’re not adding value to our customers by doing so.
Conclusion
Don’t get us wrong; we have nothing against shipping platforms reselling shipping rates. For small e-commerce companies, it’s a solution that levels the playing field (at least a little). Other shippers, however, should consider the benefits of using a carrier-independent shipment management platform like ours.
