Discover how carrier volume balancing with shipping software delivers significant cost savings

Whether you are a start-up or a multi-billion-dollar enterprise organization, every penny counts. Shipping costs can quickly eat into your profit margins, so finding ways to optimize your shipping strategy is essential. Studies by leading logistics providers consistently demonstrate that businesses that utilize multi-carrier shipping strategies can achieve significant cost savings.

Keeping track of carrier volume discounts can also be a challenge. You need to ship enough with a carrier to qualify for their discounts, but your parcel volume can change. This is where Carrier Volume Balancing (CVB) comes in. It’s a technique that helps you get the most out of shipping with multiple carriers.

Carrier volume balancing is a technique that empowers you to save on shipping costs by strategically spreading your shipments across different carriers, meeting the volume requirements to qualify for discounts. In doing this, you gain more control over your distribution strategy, reduce costs, and ultimately achieve optimal shipping performance.

Carrier Volume Balancing Explained

Ever feel like you’re constantly chasing those elusive cost savings offered by carriers for high-volume shippers? These discounts can mean substantial cost savings but maintaining them requires meeting specific shipment volume thresholds. Advanced shippers leverage carrier volume balancing via business rules to automate cost savings within their multi-carrier strategy.

Carrier Volume Balancing in Action

Carrier volume balancing is spreading your parcel shipments among different carriers while ensuring you still trigger your contracted volume discounts.

Here’s a breakdown of the key steps:

Track your carrier spend: Use advanced supply chain technology to track and analyze your spending with different carriers. This will help identify top carriers and understand your overall spending patterns.

Categorize your shipments: Leverage business rules to group shipments based on factors that might favor specific carriers. These rules can be dynamic and consider factors like weight, destination zone, service level requirements (e.g., expedited delivery), or even the type of product (hazmat, international, etc.). For example, a business rule could automatically assign expedited shipments to a carrier known for its speed, while standard ground shipments might be routed to a carrier with the most competitive rates for that specific weight and zone combination.

Analyze past data: Regularly review historical shipment data to understand carrier performance and identify opportunities to adjust your shipment allocation for future volume balancing. Analyze on-time delivery rates, cost breakdowns, or specific routes where a different carrier might be cheaper and faster. Based on this analysis, you can refine your business rules to optimize future shipment allocation and maximize discount opportunities.

Benefits of Carrier Volume Balancing

By implementing carrier volume balancing, you can achieve several key advantages:

Reduced shipping costs: Maintaining high-volume shipper discounts can significantly reduce your overall shipping expenses. Studies show that multi-carrier strategies, which use carrier volume balancing, can save businesses an average of 15-30% on shipping compared to using just one carrier. [Single Carrier Shipping Strategies are Dead – here’s why!]

Increased network flexibility: Carrier volume balancing allows you to leverage the strengths of different carriers for various shipment types. This ensures you get the most competitive rates and best possible service for each package you send. [Compare risk vs reward for 6 different carrier types!]

Stronger negotiating power: Distributing your shipping volume across multiple carriers makes you a more valuable customer. Here’s how to leverage this power to negotiate better rates and service. [What are the other 2 practical strategies for conquering shipping costs?

• Become a known entity: Consistently high shipping volume makes you a valuable customer. Emphasize your commitment to a long-term partnership with the carrier during negotiations.
• Demystify the rate structure: Deeply understand the carrier’s rate structure, including base rates, accessorial charges (surcharges), and any hidden fees. Don’t hesitate to request transparency in their fee arrangements.
• Define clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Clearly define your service expectations in a formal SLA. This ensures both you and the carrier are on the same page regarding on-time delivery, shipment handling, and other performance metrics. Consider negotiating multi-year contracts with your chosen carriers to ensure stability and potentially lock in favorable rates.
• Benchmarking and performance metrics: Regularly benchmark shipping rates across different carriers to ensure you’re getting the most competitive pricing. Track and analyze carrier performance metrics like on-time delivery rates and damage rates. Use this data as leverage to negotiate better terms during contract renewals or mid-year reviews.

Multi-Carrier Shipping Software: The Key to Effortless Carrier Volume Balancing

Carrier volume balancing offers significant advantages but managing it across multiple carriers manually can be difficult and time-consuming. Multi-carrier shipping software simplifies the process, becoming the essential tool for optimizing your shipping strategy.

How Multi-Carrier Shipping Software Streamlines Volume Balancing

Automated carrier selection: Advanced shipping software solutions offer features that automatically select the most cost-effective carrier based on your predefined criteria. This carrier rate shopping considers volume discounts, so you always get the best discount without manual calculations.

Simplified management for better allocation: Multi-carrier shipping software simplifies managing your carrier network within a single platform. Easily adjust how you distribute your shipments across different carriers to better balance your volume and gain access to the best discounts.

Centralized management: By integrating seamlessly with your existing systems, multi-carrier shipping software simplifies the entire shipping process. It centralizes the management of your carrier network, eliminating the need to juggle multiple carrier platforms.

Multi-carrier software goes beyond automating tasks. It offers insights into shipments across all carriers. This proactive approach addresses any issues and ensures packages are on track to meet volume thresholds for discounts.

Many shipping software solutions have built-in compliance features. These features ensure shipments meet the carrier-specific regulations and documentation requirements. This minimizes the risk of delays or penalties that could disrupt your volume balancing efforts. [Learn more about Compliance: The Carrier’s Rulebook]

Why ProShip is Your Perfect Partner for Carrier Volume Balancing

There are many multi-carrier shipping software options, but ProShip multi-carrier shipping solution offers features that make it especially efficient for carrier volume balancing:

Extensive carrier network: ProShip is carrier agnostic, and connects you to a wide range of global, national, regional, final mile carriers. This expands your options for finding the most cost-effective carrier based on volume thresholds, maximizing your discount opportunities.

Automated volume rules: Set volume thresholds within ProShip. ProShip’s shipping software automatically picks the most cost-effective carrier based on your criteria and other factors, including label creation time, contracted delivery days, customer choice and more. This ensures you qualify for the best discounts without manual effort.

Seamless integration & scalability: ProShip integrates smoothly with your existing enterprise software systems, eliminating the need for juggling multiple platforms. It also scales to meet your growing business, remaining reliable and stable as your shipping volume increases.

ProShip: Savings & Efficiency Through Carrier Volume Balancing

ProShip simplifies carrier selection and streamlines network management. These benefits empower your organization to make informed decisions for optimizing your carrier network. The result? Significant cost savings through effective carrier volume balancing and a more efficient overall shipping operation.

Take Control of Your Shipping Costs

Can ProShip be the key to mastering carrier volume balancing and achieving optimal shipping performance for your business? Contact our shipping experts today to see if ProShip can help you unlock cost savings and streamline your shipping processes.