There are many costs bundled with running a business. You need to pay for utilities, payrolls, taxes, etc. Freight shipping rates might be making up for a big portion of your budget. Whether you’re a new or old business, you would always want to minimize the expenditure. When you know how to negotiate freight rates, you can save significantly on your costs. You can indeed visit different carrier’s websites and compare freight rates online. Below are five hacks to get the best freight rates.
1 – Know different options of transportation
There are three popular ways to ship your goods. You can go for air freight, ocean, or ground shipping. If you want to ship internationally, ocean shipping can save you money. Air shipping is an expensive one, but it’s also the fastest way. You can mix the transporting options to optimize the delivery time and costs. In the case of local goods, ground shipping is your best bet. But with multiple carriers, you may find it difficult obtaining quotes from them on time. Use a powerful resource like LCLxchange to simply the process and get all quotes at one place online.
2 – Stop paying for things you don’t need
Before you consider a carrier, you must identify the level of service you are seeking. It helps when you speak to your forwarder about your needs. And you need to see if they can fulfill your requirements. For instance, do you want comprehensive customer service? Or you only care about your goods getting shipped from point A to B? If you need shipping services for a particular season, then why pay for an entire year?
3 – Always consolidate your shipping
If you ship your goods to and from a single location, you must consolidate your goods. In such a case, you should make your shipments larger. And lower the frequency of shipping. Some studies state that businesses can save up to 90% of their freight rates by merely consolidating the shipments. You can stack and shrink wrap similar boxes onto a single pallet. This way, you not only save time, but you also save money. You may use shipping container quotes instantto get some idea about costs. You can also use LCLxchange to submit a quick rate request and get offers from our network of providers that meet your distinct requirement.
4 – Read through the fine print
You must read through the fine print. You must watch out for hidden fees. You also need to check for inflexibilities that may go against your requirements. You can negotiate your costs when you know what’s needed or not out of your fine print. Some things you should never miss in a fine print are below:
- The time allowed for delivery and pick-up
- Demurrage charges
- Cash on delivery fees
- Holiday and weekend deliveries fees
5 – Consider shipping off-peak
If possible, you should ship your goods on off-peak days like Friday. Many customers would want to stock their stores by Thursday. It helps them prepare for the weekend. But you got to consider the cargo you’re carrying too. You may rely on an instant freight calculator to compare costs on off-peak and peak days. You can consider Mondays, as they are low-traffic days too.
To summarize
Those were the five hacks to get the best freight rates. You should consider all the transportation options you have and choose the convenient one. You should also consolidate your goods. It saves you big on shipping costs by shipping more but less frequently. If you want to save time visiting different websites and calling multiple freight forwarders, then get an array of comparative quotes on a single website. We are talking about LCLxchange, the dedicated source that presents multiple quotes from several carriers. Speed up your decision-making process and streamline your supply chain logistics with LCLxchange.