How A 3PL Can Work For You

If a 3PL is a new term to you, you may be wondering just what kind of image the phrase is meant to conjure. 3PL stands for Third Party Logistics Company, and refers to the services of a non-asset based company which serves other businesses in order to help them reduce costs and risks, and manage expenses and time. That said, a 3PL company generally does not provide a reduction in rates and these tend to be competitive in whatever area you happen to be in, so you may find yourself spending the same amount of money as far as rate reductions are concerned. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is the point of using a 3PL or a public warehouse if rate reductions cannot be found?

The answer is that the benefits of utilizing a 3PL lie outside of rates rather, what a 3PL can do for your company is more concerned with order tracking efficiency, mode shifting, shipment visibility, risk reduction, time savings, consolidations and improved carrier management.

If your freight generally consists of regular LTL, working with a third party logistics company will allow you to utilize their computer tracking systems to figure out ways to consolidate truckload shipments. For instance, you may not be able to see that you have the option of shipping only one full truck load from Chicago to New York once a week instead of sending 12 pallets a week. This is an oversimplified example, but a 3PL company can easily fine tune all shipments so that they are consolidated in the simplest possible way, saving time and money for your company. The software used by these logistic companies serves your business needs by reducing shipping costs.

A logistics firm serves your company in the department of order tracking, carefully notating all of your shipments so that you do not have to resend an expedited shipment after another goes by the wayside. It is a common problem for software programs to stop tracking shipments as soon as those shipments come to rest on the docks. A truck is loaded, and the tracking stops there. But by now you know that that there could be trouble down the road, and a customer could miss an important shipment. To prevent such a mishap, a 3PL will use its high end software to manage a shipment as it is transported to the docks, until it reaches the hands of a paying customer. A logistics company may even go a step further, offering web access through which your company can check the status of a shipment for a customer. This means that shipments can be tracked from any place, at any time.

A 3PL can provide the service of finding trucks for all your shipping needs, so you never have to consider such a thing. This service saves your company plenty of time, and allows your staff to focus on more important, money-making themes, such as customer service. There will always be a truck around to make shipments on your behalf, and the logistics company takes over the responsibility of coordinating the shipment from the suppliers to your company to your customers.

----------------------------------------------------
Stewart Wrighter recently stored the overstock from his store in a Houston public warehouse. For more information about public warehouses
http://www.schulzecontainer.com/ .

EasyPublish this article: http://submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=196265