Most transport and logistics companies know that non-standard or ‘ugly’ freight can impact their bottom line. It’s cumbersome. Measuring and tracking it slows down the movement of loads. And, auditing it manually is time-consuming, inconvenient, and unreliable.
But most don’t know exactly how much it’s financially impacting them. Some have never truly assessed the damage. Others deprioritise rectifying issues because they believe that bigger and more costly problems lie elsewhere. The reality is though, poorly cubed freight is often one of the single biggest factors that contribute to revenue leakage for transport & logistics, and postal businesses.
If you’re like most transport & logistics and postal companies, relying on estimates and customer declared measurements, the bottom line is that the 5-20% of your freight that is not conveyable is likely riddled with inaccuracies. When you add up the resulting impacts – from billing inaccuracies to not cubing to capacity to customer service issues – you could be losing hundreds of thousands – even millions – every year.
As you know, in the freight industry, small inefficiencies can snowball into massive problems. So, what can you do about ugly freight? In this post, we’ll look at the impacts and give you a solution that lets you preserve your revenue, time, and in some cases your business.
How does ugly freight impact your bottom line?
There’s not just one way that non-standard freight can negatively impact business. There are opportunities at nearly every stage of the transport process that can cost time, money, and growth opportunities. And the reason they are so commonly overlooked? They’ve become “normal”.
Here are the most common ways oversized, awkward, or under-declared freight could be stopping your transport company from thriving.
Revenue leakage
If you aren’t able to quickly and accurately measure awkward pallets and packages, how do you know your company is charging enough for your services? The answer is, you don’t know. This means you’re relying on customer-declared measurements and are at risk of under-billing and losing revenue on every single load.
Freight visibility
Without accurate freight data, you don’t have a clear view of your processes. This makes it harder to identify potential points of friction and resolve them. Take this scenario as an example: if your company doesn’t know that incoming freight measurements are off and you’ll need a second vehicle to ensure on-time delivery, your customer might receive their load after the delivery date. You can’t fix what you can’t see. This can lead to customer service issues, and a lack of visibility over freight movements for both the business and your customers, putting you at risk of losing clients.
Time-efficiency
Don’t underestimate the efficiencies your company is sacrificing if you’re still using manual measuring and auditing processes. Doing this takes more time and drives up labour costs. Depending on how much non-standard freight you have in a load, which is typically between 5-20%, it could slow down movement enough to force you to break your service level agreement. When you don’t deliver on time, what does it cost your business?
Increased costs
Ugly freight can also drive up costs through the flow-on effect. Here’s a common scenario to illustrate this point: your staff ends up organising freight according to its declared cubic dimensions, because they were relying on estimates, not accurate measurements. As a result, loads that were supposed to fit in scheduled vehicles now require more vehicle resources to meet your customer’s expectations at a higher cost. You may also have contractual penalties if the freight is delivered late because of this change. And on it goes until that problem you thought wasn’t a priority is actually costing your business an incredible amount of money.
Stifled growth
All of these impacts don’t just shrink revenue. They make it difficult to grow. Transport and logistics companies need to operate at peak efficiencies to stay competitive and grow. This means plugging the holes that drain revenue, eliminating bottleneck triggers, and being proactive to avoid customer service issues.
Optimise freight cubic dimensioning to protect revenue
To resolve these issues, you need a tool that gives your workers the ability to efficiently measure and calculate freight volumes, from small parcels to large or oversized non-conveyable freight.
Any freight measurement solution that captures, stores, and communicates this information needs to be easy to use and implement. Transport and logistics companies are notoriously busy, so there’s no room in the equation for making a change that will take too long to get used to, doesn’t integrate with the current enterprise systems or requires a substantial investment to try out.
This is why a lot of transport businesses have dealt with the expensive impacts of ugly freight for so long – there wasn’t a simple solution.
Now, there is one. Enter Leopard Cube – an all-in-one portable freight dimensioning system designed for any sized freight. And, because it has a scalable pricing model and a 90-day free trial, trying it involves zero risk.
What happens when you address cubic weight problems?
With the right cubing solution, your staff can accurately measure non-standard, oversized, non-conveyable or ugly freight on every load or shift. No more laborious, time-consuming, or expensive manual processes. No more relying on customer declared estimates and inaccurate data to function.
Leopard Cube is a certified, legal for trade measurement, freight-dimensioning system that measures and calculates the cubic weight of any sized item. Learn more about how transport and logistics companies are using it to recover thousands in annual revenue, or contact us to learn more.
