Freight Broker Training : How To Move LTL Freight Like A PRO

what we want to talk about tonight is less than truckload freight and why i chose that at a topic as a topic tonight is because oftentimes when you first start out with a shipper what they usually give you is ltl freight they give you a lane that's moving from point a to point b and it may be two or three pallets okay oftentimes that happens so we want to address that tonight how you currently handle that and how you want to look to handle that as you move forward in this business because one thing that we have to understand is that we don't want to stay where we are in our freight brokerages okay one of the first things that you want to going to look to do is to start improving things the question is what do you want to improve okay you have to decide that based off of your business what's happening in your business but me myself one of the first things that i improved in my business was my tms system that was the first thing that i looked to improve why that's the foundation for rates and how i move freight knew i needed help it's particularly in the ltl arena now why do you think that you get ltl loads from customers why do you think that is do you think that's random do you think that hey the shipper just needs assistance with that ltl why does that usually happen if you've gotten ltl loads mostly from shippers or quite often put the number one in yeah myers said most people shy away from and says that's they need help with the loads okay they don't have much freight to move okay i think it's a test oftentimes uh to see what you are going to do how are you going to respond okay this is the guy that has been talking to me he's been saying or she has been saying they want to work with me okay so now i am going to give them this type of freight and i'll see what happens people see that type of freight and they run in a different direction why because they don't have the systems in place to move that freight but we don't get to pick and choose what our shippers need help with okay we don't get to say you only need help with full truckload okay they need help with ltl so if you move that type of load then of course you are probably going to be looked at in a different type of way because if they gave that load to you that's probably a load that they're having difficulty moving okay because they want to see what you're going to do or what can you do you've talked you've said some things so now here is a load let's see what he or she will do with it if you have systems in place you can get the low move if you don't have systems then it's going to be more of a struggle for you to get those loads moved we have to improve the way that we move loads we don't then we don't stay competitive okay so those systems that i talk about i want to make sure that we're clear those are starter systems those systems are to get you started but you don't want to stay there first year in business very shortly after that probably at the 14-15 month mark i was looking to change my tms and the reason why i did that was because i knew that i had to have a different tms in place somewhere where i could come to get access to a whole lot of rates instead of me just having to go out to lower boards and find trucks trying to find needles in haystacks basically is it really that difficult needles in haystack probably exaggeration i do want to make sure that you understand it's not the easiest thing to take an ltl load to the low board and get that load moved at a competitive price i knew that was a big part of what i was doing so i had to figure out how can i move ltl freight more efficient what would allow for me to move ltl freight more efficiently because it cannot just be about me and my own network it has to be something else okay so that's why i started to look at the tms and improving that system i'm going to show you something on that tonight a demonstration of a tms particularly for the ltl portion of that tms so that you'll see how it works and what the difference is what you're currently doing right now and what you'll be looking to do at some point in your business i also want to say this right now many of you aren't ready to make that move you know some of you are too early in your businesses but what we also want to understand is that we don't want to be too early making this decision and we don't want to be too late mate when i say this decision i'm talking about upgrading systems systems that you feel like need to be improved i'm telling you the first one i i looked at and up and improved was my tms do i want to show you something here before we go any further see if you don't understand your value then you know you don't you don't even know why shippers use you this is a article on yahoo it says truck driver shortage is about as bad as i've ever seen it ceo said that this company has done has doled out 30 to 35 in total pay increases over the last 12 months but suggested more may be needed the driver's situation is about as bad as i've ever seen in my career uh in the depths cover 19 pandemic the trump transportation industry lost six percent of its pre-pandemic labor force as 1.5 million workers blase block okay so as you can see there truck drivers the trucking industry has definitely been impacted by coving no two ways about that can you think of anything that hasn't been when you see driver shortage when there's a whole lot of demand and there's not a whole lot of capacity then rates go up and they continue to shoot up truck driver's shortage is about as bad as i've ever seen what do you take from that as a broker what does that say to you shippers need help rates gonna be right opportunities for the brokers higher rates that there is a decrease in trucks high carriers exactly how do you take advantage of that that's that's the million dollar question right now most of you have what is referred to as a cradle to the grave the tight business okay everything starts and finishes with you you have to be involved you know in order for anything to move forward you don't have any automation basically in place right do we want to stay there no we don't want to stay there we understand that it starts there but if we don't want to stay there so your your job is to find out what do you want to improve as a first improvement to move you more from totally being dependent on you till now you have a system in place to help you instead of you being always being involved okay because also remember most of you are going to have a 95 you got a job okay and although we're going back it seems to some order you know this virtual thing is coming back in play again because of the delta variant um you know that doesn't seem to be sustainable you know so you're more than likely going to be on a job at some point if you're working a job and you're trying to you know do your freight brokerage business if it's always like that you know it's going to be tough let's just let's just face the facts if it always if it depends totally on you and you are at work eight hours out of the day that that's gonna be tough especially if you're at work during the time that shippers are at work take that over this cradle to the grave thing is not scalable especially when your time is split between you between your brokerage and your job is it a different ballgame if it's just you and you don't have to go to a job yes it is a different ball game but even that even in that you still want to move away from that that's why i moved from low pilot to e-freight solutions within a 14 month period i needed to do that to push my business forward did i feel comfortable doing it at that moment not totally because i went from 100 per month to 500 a month with the new tms i had automation in place i didn't have to depend just on me so the system definitely pays for itself but at the same time you have to have a freight you have to have an opportunity you have to know when the time is right for you to make changes make upgrades in your business and you have to know what to upgrade you need to look to see what's important to you and your your business model what's an what what's an upgrade that i need to make right now okay but what you'll also see is that when it when you have a system that puts everything in one place it's going to save you a lot of time you want to be able to go out and give timely quotes back to shippers okay just plug it in a system and let the system give you the rate and you basically add your commissions on to that and you can still do that from the system you know so everything is automated and it's going to make your life and your business run a whole lot more efficient i am going to talk to you about a tms tonight okay and i'm not suggesting that you go out and get this tms now saying that you should go and get this tms i'm just going to show you some features in the tms and i'm going to show you some parts of that tms that is just like the tms that i have and let you take a look at it and decide what you would like to do at some point maybe in the future okay but i want you to get your minds wrapped around that you cannot stay as a traditional freight broker for effort okay you have we have to stop moving away from that why because traditional freight brokers what you're doing to get a rate and what a digital going into a digital market space is is like you know the 1940s as opposed to the 1990s to different worlds okay so what we want to do is to make sure that we are you know keeping up or getting up with the times at some point not starting off but as you start to move freight you want to start to make those decisions ltl i love ltl frame at one time i thought it was very difficult to move ltl freight and that was because we didn't have systems in place but once we put systems in place i realized that man that is the right that is the freight because that is afraid that you can make the most margin on in my experience okay that's why i like it i love ltl freight all right but again with it with this tms i want to say this also i almost forgot this okay i don't get a dime not a nickel not a penny if you decide to go and get the tms that i am going to share with you at some point so i am just showing you this and giving you some idea of where you want to take your business at some point and showing you that a traditional freight broker this cradle to the grave freight broker we don't want to stay there we want to start there but not stay there so next what else do i want to mention before we get into the little demo here for you um okay now question that i have for you before we get into this demo do you sell your service based on how cheap you can move freight and says i have said it to a shipper i sell my brokerage your services once you start with a shipper with cheap rates you're doing bought into market rates okay i want to make sure we all on the same sheet of music no we don't want to be the cheapest broker you know we don't necessarily want to be the cheapest broker okay please let's make sure also that we understand that the reason why shippers use our services is because we can go out and get discounts in lanes that they cannot get because if they can get the rates that you can get then they don't need you the question is how do you make money and give discounts ding ding ding ding ding getting more loads volume sounds like kevin is talking here volume okay you can't and says volume chris says me personally my relationship with my carriers hmm okay see because what he's saying is is that he moves lows with certain carriers he has pre-negotiated rates sometimes maybe with some of those carriers or maybe not to that extent just yet but he has relationships with those carriers already and he feels like he can go to those carriers and get solid and reasonable rates jeremiah is that what you're saying did i hit that on the head okay um [Music] yes sir okay cool the andrew said depends on if you'll have continuous loads with this shipper whoa now let's talk about that andrew it depends on if you'll have continuous loads that's an interesting statement that you just made that we gotta dig down on okay because now you and i and everybody else on this call when we are going to a shipper we have no intention of moving one load and that being the end of the deal right we have no intention of that being the case but of course that could happen you know you can say hey well we move the load that's it okay but that is why we want to go in and make sure that we put the white glove service on when we're moving lows for the first time we want to make sure that this shipper is aware that we provide value okay and when you get a uh ltl load and you move that load i can pretty much guarantee you unless that shipper is a itty-bitty small shipper you are going to continue to get loads and your volume will increase okay and even smaller shippers they have if you move ltl lows to those shippers they're going to look to you because as someone said earlier people run in the opposite direction when they see ltl lows the reason is because they don't have the systems in place okay so the next question i have is how do you provide the cheapest rates what do you do to get the cheapest rates some of you say hey i sell based on getting the best rates how do you do it factoring my own loads i look for backhauls if you can okay all right so basically what you you know that is that that says to me is you don't have a system in place to get cheapest rates you're just saying hey i'm gonna go out and look for the best rates that's that's honorable that's wonderful but it's probably not going to be the best records this is going to be probably middle of the road or higher rates because you don't have a system in place yet sorry the 22 with your rate confirmation then set a minimum one way that you get cheaper rates is you have relationships with carriers already you've moved loads with them and it's just not about a one and done type deal you bring them rates that are profitable to them okay they're not always the best rates they're not for them they are not not always the top of the mountain rates but they keep the wheels turning they keep them making money okay so you have a network and you can go to this network with competitive pricing and get loads moved okay all right that's one way those are not necessarily the best rates but those are decent rates that you're providing you're winning some of those you're losing more of those okay now let's talk about how you get the cheapest rates you have to have relationships direct with ltl carriers fedex those carriers that you see double trailers you gotta have relationships with ltl carriers how do you do that you and i as a small brokerage we don't have tariffs in place we don't have enough volume to go to an ltl carrier and say hey i want you to handle my ltl freight because i don't have that type of volume you don't have that type of but bigger freight brokerages have those uh tariffs in place you'll go direct to that carrier through that tariff through that broker's tariff so you're getting bottom line rates okay bottom line rates so then you can move loads and you can move loads based on i can provide you the best price because you have a system in place that gives you the best price how do you make money on giving the best price because i can go direct to ltl carriers and see the percentage that i can put on that is going to be much higher than i can put on a load that i got from a carrier who does not specialize in ltl freight questions on that any questions on that does that make sense if that makes sense and you don't you know you know that you kind of understand what i'm saying say put the number seven in with that okay cool jeremiah bobby cool cool cool samantha all right so that's how we get cheap rates and remember that's a part of your job that's a part of your job to get discounted rates okay you hear me say that i'm not trying to be the cheapest broker i'm not but i do want to be able to go in and lane and get the best rate i can get in that lane to take to that ship because i know the more competitive i am and rate the more likely i am to get that load so my job is to figure out how can i stay now at the same time you know i'm not trying to go under market on every low you know that's certainly not the case but there are some times i can go under market and still make considerable profits because i'm going to ltl carriers direct welcome to the thai tms less than truckload demo thanks for joining us today we're going to cover how managers can utilize our dashboard to keep a high-level view on everything going on in their ltl operation then we'll jump into our rating engine to show you how you can get an instant rate from any ltl carrier that you're working with lastly we'll show you how your operations team can manage all of their ongoing shipments from one single page which helps to streamline the process making it faster more efficient and allowing you to increase your ltl shipment volume let's get started here on the ltl dashboard we give your management team the ability to have a high level view of the entire operation our goal is to allow you to manage shipments by exception thai tms is an industry leader in ltl automation so most of your shipments will go from dispatch to delivered without the need for human intervention however for the 10 percent of shipments that don't quite make it through automation we give you a red alert that allows you to pay attention to the most important items and in blue we have all your shipments that are going smoothly given the automation for example we have 279 shipments that were recently quoted and of those shipments 277 of them have already been booked meaning that they will automatically be dispatched and go through the shipment life cycle utilizing api and edi automation and for the small percentage of shipments that aren't going perfectly i can quickly see that i did not get a carrier response on one of my shipments one of my edis were rejected by the carrier two of the pickup date have passed and so on the ltl operations dashboard gives your management team the ability to see what shipments need more attention and our assignments tool allows them to collaborate with teammates in order to assign those shipments to operations representatives that will be responsible for handling these shipments when a task is completed the operations rep can mark it as completed and your operations manager will know immediately now that you've seen our dashboard let's dive into our rating engine to show you how you can get an instant rate from your ltl carriers via api and edi connectivity now here we are on the shipment creation page which i've select ltl as my shipment type i've already selected a customer for this shipment so now i simply need to type in my freight details tai uses api tariffs to link to all your pre-negotiated rates with your ltl carriers pulling those rates into the system and making it easy for you to rate shop and book shipments without leaving the dms to start i'll need to type in my origin and destination information now that i have my origin and destination details i can move down to my accessorial menu within thai tms there are thousands of accessorial options so we make it customizable so that your staff doesn't get overwhelmed with choices we only want the accessorial options that are pertinent to your operation to display on the quote origination page for example on this shipment i will need a lift gate for the drop off from there i can scroll down to my pickup and delivery information where i can select the date for the pickup and the date for the drop-off i can also add in any details that i need for delivery or pickup instructions for example on this delivery i need the driver to go to the back of the building to make the drop-off lastly i'll need a few details on the items that i'm shipping for this shipment we have two pallets with a hundred pieces at a weight of one thousand total we'll put grade all kinds just for now as an example and if i know the class code i can jump right to the class code or type in my nmfc number but in order to keep things moving quickly tai automatically estimates the class code based on the weight and dimensions of the shipment based on the weight and the length of 48 width of 48 and a height of 48 tai automatically estimates the class code of 125. from here all i need to do is generate a smart quote the smart quote utilizes our rating engine to pull in all of your negotiated rates from carriers via api connectivity as you can see i have several options based on my own negotiated tariffs my buy and sell rate is already established because on the back end i've already built in my margins for this customer i can also set my margins at the organization level or even at the tariff level if i hover over my buy rate i can actually see the detailed breakdown of the pricing including my liftgate charge based on the accessorial and since this is a california shipment i also have a california state fee from there i could select this rate with insurance which is another feature that ty adds that allows the broker to increase their revenue by adding margin to insurance that can be offered through the system however for the sake of example i'll just go ahead and select this rate without the insurance which immediately takes me to the shipment profile from the shipment profile i can keep track of the shipment as it moves through the shipment lifecycle from quote to dispatched to in transit to delivered all of these updates feed from the carrier's website right into my activity log so i can keep track of every update in order to know exactly what's going on with this shipment additionally all my shipment documents are right here inside the profile itself my bill of lading carrier confirmation pickup alerts delivery alerts labels and the quote sheet which can all be sent right from the system i can even attach additional documents by selecting the document management tab if i still need to email the quote sheet to my client i can do that right from the system tai even utilizes templates that allow your team to move fast these templates can be customized to your voice and your business standards allowing your team to move quickly from this menu once the email has been sent to the customer they can click here to book the shipment which will immediately trigger automation allowing your shipment to be dispatched automatically and move through the rest of the shipment life cycle with thai automation at thai we handle all our api and edi automation in-house so you never have to go to a third party to get a separate licensing agreement or contact another company for support related to automation the thai tms team has an in-house support team that can help you with all of your needs now that you know how to create a shipment select your rate and let the automation handle the rest let's jump into our ltl shipments page where your operations team can manage all active shipments from one single page here we are on the ltl shipment search page from this single page your operations team will be able to see every active shipment making it easy to keep a high-level view on management of all shipments in transit without leaving this page i can do quite a bit i can even access the dashboard we showed you earlier without having to go back to the dashboard menu allowing me to see the high level view while having the operation to drill down into any shipment i need to look at from this page i can see the status of every active shipment in the system and i can even see alerts that let me know if there's any problems with the shipments for example on this shipment i don't have a pro number so i'll need to call a carrier and get that pro number and type it into the system once i receive the pro number from the carrier i don't have to leave this page in order to update the status of the shipment i simply open up the pop-up menu type in a pro number and update the shipment from that same update status menu i can see most of the details for this shipment and note that i've made these details public so that my customer can actually see these details from their front office if i prefer them to be private i can simply select private however making them public allows your customers to log into your front office portal in order to get updates instead of having to call your staff or email them for updates once the shipment has been delivered the status bar will change colors and the delivered option will be highlighted allowing me to see that the shipment has been delivered if i need to attach any emails or documentation to the shipment i can do so right from this page i can also send emails to the customer or to the carrier right from this page or even other teammates that are involved with the shipment and again from the send message tab i have customizable templates that allow me to keep moving fast i can also see the entire activity log for the shipment including all of the updates feeding in from api and edi connectivity to the carrier so as the shipment moves through the shipment lifecycle via automation i'm updated every time thai tms communicates with the carrier system i can also keep track of the location by selecting location history from this menu this will bring up the map showing the breadcrumb trail as the carrier updates feed into the system i will see the update points on the map allowing the operations team to keep a good handle on where the shipment is at all times in case the customer calls looking for an update for any of these shipments if i need to go into the shipment details to make any significant edits that's the only time i would need to leave this page in order to go into the shipment profile this option will be reserved for shipments where the details you're changing would in fact affect the pricing and would need to be re-rated which is why we take you back into the shipment creation page in this demo we've shown you the dashboard that allows your management team to keep a high-level view on the entire ltl operation and manage by exception we showed you the quoting page where you can see how we connect directly to the carriers utilizing our own in-house rating engine built through api and edi connectivity once the shipment is booked automation handles the rest go from booked to delivered without the need for human intervention and lastly we showed you the operations page which allows your team to drill down into any shipment right from a single page with such a high level of automation and a streamlined process thai tms customers increase shipment volume on an average of 30 percent in their first year of working with thai tms for their operation thank you for watching our demo any questions any questions on anything that we have covered as far as ltl freight this evening any questions any questions anything that you want to share anything that you thought what your thoughts are of the tms and moving to a tms like that at some point do you think that it has value do you see yourself yourself being able to be able to move freight more efficiently with a tms such as that all right so that ends our super tuesday business meeting for this week those invites that i sent out thank you so much for taking advantage of those invites we usually just do this with our own class today we extended invites to other people uh so welcome and i hope you enjoyed the class and all of you that are usually here we'll see you again not this tuesday but the next tuesday so until that time comes see you at the top because the bottom is much too crowded have a great night have a great week

Channel: Brandon Scott

Views: 8,137

Keywords: freight broker, freight brokers, freight broker training, freight broker business, Freight Broker Training : How To Move LTL Freight Like A PRO, freight broker training videos, freight brokerage, freight brokerage business, freight broker business owner, how to move ltl freight, LTL Freight, ltl freight broker, ltl freight shipping, what is ltl freight, online freight broker training, what is a freight broker, truck brokerage business, truck broker, freight brokering

Id: kRtUUeRRI30

Length: 32min 17sec (1937 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021