Using a qualified freight auditor to monitor your parcel carrier services can help reduce shipping costs. Logistic reporting can provide a wealth of valuable information that you can use day-in and day-out to improve the efficiency of your business’s distribution practices.
For example, reporting from a freight auditor can reveal details of your carriers' on-time performance for everything you've shipped. To help reduce shipping costs, it can separate late packages eligible for refunds from those that my not be refundable. Also helpful are the reports, which itemize packages manifested by your company but not tendered to a carrier.
A freight auditor can also provide a breakdown of packages delivered via air services that could have been delivered with the same time guarantee using a ground delivery service. Reports like these show you when to use a less expensive service to achieve the same delivery schedule. Such efficiency reports help you to dramatically reduce shipping costs.
Another report you may find useful is an address correction report. Here, a freight auditor compares the delivery address with your carriers “corrected” address for every package that was penalized with an address correction fee. In some cases these fees can be reversed. Additionally, this information can minimize on-going address correction fees by providing the information necessary to update the address book in your manifest system. You reduce shipping costs by avoiding delivery address mistakes.
Finally, if you are repeatedly hit with extra fees for oversize, overweight or incorrectly packaged products, you would benefit greatly by taking advantage of the services of a freight auditor. Their reporting solutions for oversize packages and dimensional weight can help you change the way you package your products through the use of smaller dimensionally appropriate containers. Again, another way to reduce shipping costs.