Learning about your shipping practice has never been easier!
One of the most frequent requests we receive from customers is to provide feedback on a carrier’s pricing agreement. While every customer’s agreement is different, ranging from 2 pages to 99 (yes!), below are five (5) tips that we compiled throughout our role as our customer’s Shipping Advocate!
- How to find what my Earned Discount (FedEx) or Portfolio Tier Incentives (UPS) are?
Most agreements include an incentive based on weekly shipping minimums by mode (ground, express, etc). Using your 71lbs dashboard, on the Insights page, you can easily see that your ground spend in the last 12 months was $148,437 (arrow in red below).
With your dashboard information, you can easily see that your company earned a 10% earned discount.
- Which Weight/zone discounts should I care about?
One way to narrow down which discounts matter to you is by viewing your average shipping weight (15.02 lbs) and the shipping zone you most ship to (5).
These data points will allow you to identify 19% as the most common discount you should consider based on the carrier’s Weight/Zone matrix incentives.
- Waiver on your MBG.
Carriers often include a clause to waive your Money-Back-Guarantee rights. Make sure this is not in your agreement! If it is, ask to be removed.
- Know your shipping metrics
One of the most powerful ways to arm yourself in a pricing agreement negotiation with your carrier is to know as much important data metrics about your business. Using your Shipping To Map and Shipping From Map allows you to know the top 3 states you ship to and from, along with average weight and average cost per shipments to those states.
- Ask us!
As your Shipping Advocate, we are proud to serve thousands of customers who rely on us to help them assess their carrier agreements, new pricing proposals, and shipping strategies for all modes of shipping.
