Check other suppliers
One key way to achieve this is by regularly monitoring the freight market and comparing it to your current rates. By keeping up to date with the market, you may be able to find more competitive offers from other providers.
Think about different solutions
If you deliver the goods by road, think about sea. Dare to check solutions even those you believe will never work for you. Sometimes there can be surprises.
Talk with a freight forwarder
Once you come to a point when no other way seems possible – talk with a freight forwarder. Freight forwarder is an expert within transport and logistics who has broader overlook and may give you advise or offer a right solution.
Discuss with your business-partners
Most of the companies with a healthy business-set constantly look for improvements. Probably within your business partners there is an interesting case-study ready to implement.
Consolidate your shipments
The economy of scale principle works in logistics as well. Larger ships bring more cargo with much less $ per ton. If you deliver just few pallets and employ a whole truck for this, you obviously overpay. If you use a small truck or even a van – you still overpay, because trip cost are not that different from a large truck. Consider consolidation instead. If you are not so active trader or your consignment cannot wait until you have more cargo to deliver – you can still consolidate with other shippers.
Use vehicles with increased capacity
This stems from the previous paragraph. The more you deliver, the less it costs. Another way to achieve this is to use vehicles with larger capacity: large truck, large container, larger wagon, ship, etc.
For one of our customers who is trading metals we proposed a cost-effective intermodal solution to deliver more – 28 tons instead of 24 tons per truck. Learn more about this solution here.