In a supply chain environment where businesses have traditionally struggled with gaining visibility across logistics operations, door-to-door freight forwarding solutions present a lucrative business opportunity for freight forwarders to simplify shipping for shippers. With door-to-door freight, freight forwarders guarantee complete logistics handling, right from pick-up at origin to delivery at the destination..

From a financial standpoint door-to-door freight makes sense as profit margins go up by 33%, even as it cuts waiting times to a couple of mins from a usual two-day wait for a consolidated

With the help of technology and data insights, businesses can overcome challenges associated with traditional freight solutions and offer a comprehensive solution for shippers. This increases the value they offer and makes them a one-stop shop for all their customer’s shipment needs.

Door-to-door freight benefits from a business perspective

Selling door-to-door freight offerings is a profitable venture for freight forwarding businesses, both in terms of reducing their logistics cost and improving customer retention.

With traditional logistics, shippers have to get in touch with several partners to move their cargo. Door-to-door freight eliminates this fragmented approach and offers a single point of contact instead, taking care of the customer’s complete logistics need for a shipment. For instance, in the traditional model, a freight forwarder arranges the transportation of the cargo across the ocean and has it delivered to the port. Then, the customer has to contact a trucking vendor to have the cargo reach its end destination. Door-to-door freight makes it possible for the shipper to do this through a single booking with the freight forwarder.

This kind of one-stop-shop approach benefits the freight forwarder immensely. It increases business volume and brings in profitability for their business. For the customer, door-to-door freight is an attractive service offering because it boosts their productivity and saves them a lot of hassles associated with arranging shipping. Instead of dealing with multiple partners for covering different segments of the shipment process, they deal with a single point of contact. This leads to cost savings, time savings, and increased operational efficiency in several ways, solving problems and offering additional value to customers.

Consequently, offering a comprehensive solution such as door-to-door freight goes a long way in ensuring customer loyalty. End-to-end solutions like this make the customer value the product offered and increase their reliance on the business. They tend to have a single partner that takes care of their complete shipment needs without going anywhere else.

Visibility and other door-to-door freight challenges to overcome

Offering a high-level solution like door-to-door freight to customers comes with challenges of its own. Visibility control and resource availability are two important parameters that help businesses operate door-to-door freight services. A lack of these two combined with a lack of technology makes door-to-door freight challenging for smaller businesses.

Controlling visibility is a common problem that a lot of freight forwarders experience, especially while dealing with small vendors who don’t have the technology to offer visibility during pick up or delivery. Many trucking companies, especially in Asian countries, lack the technology or don’t offer it to smaller customers. Even if the technology is available, dealing with multiple vendors requires integration through several different tracking systems. Often, given the business volume and the critical mass, the integration costs don’t justify the efforts involved.

Handling different types of loads, such as less-than-container load (LCL), is especially tricky while dealing with door-to-door freight. One such instance is while moving LCL cargo to the warehouses. Warehouses offer limited time before added fees start to kick in. Trucking companies and customers might not always be able to arrange for the collection and the delivery of the cargo on time. These problems, coupled with the labor and resource shortage faced in most countries today, make it harder for businesses to book freight capacity today compared to what it was a few years ago.

Technology’s pivotal role in door-to-door freight

Backed by a reliable network, these technological features can assist businesses in simplifying freight solutions for their customers, thereby increasing their profitability and value to the customer in the long run.