Advantages of Freight Consolidation

The advantages of freight consolidation come in many different shapes and sizes. From the money saved to the simplicity added to your shipping strategy. Freight consolidation provides you and your business with more flexibility, which makes freight shipping easier. Small business operators everywhere are always looking for ways to save money, stay within budget and improve customer satisfaction. One way to save dollars on shipping is by incorporating freight consolidation into your shipping strategy. But what exactly is freight consolidation, and what are the advantages for small businesses? Let’s dive right in.

Freight Consolidation Explained

Basically, freight consolidation is the practice of “bundling” pieces of cargo headed for one location. Rather than sending several individual shipments and packages, everything goes in one fell swoop. This is an ideal shipping strategy if you’re needing to ship a few pallets of cargo at a time or if you are shipping a lot of smaller shipments to the same location.

Remember, freight consolidation takes a fair level of freight packaging skill to be done effectively. You’ll need to have plenty of internal and external packaging materials on hand and the know-how to keep all your consolidated cargo protected.

Get the packaging details you need and get a comprehensive look at all things freight packaging by downloading our free Guide to Freight Packaging.

Advantages of Freight Consolidation

#1: Money

Who doesn’t enjoy saving money? The first advantage of freight consolidations for small businesses is the money shippers can save. Instead of shipping everything out individually for its own specific rate, consolidated freight shipments can take advantage of volume shipping rates that cost less than multiple shipping rates for each shipment by itself. This also minimizes the number of billing adjustments you might receive from a carrier should there be a discrepancy in weight, dimensions, freight class, or contents of the cargo.

Since your overall shipping costs are reduced with consolidated freight shipments, that means your customers will be able to reap some benefits as well! More affordable shipping rates and keeping your shipments moving and arriving to your customers on time will make your customers happy and can impact customer loyalty.

#2: Freight Management Made Easier

Who wants to track the statuses and whereabouts of a number of different shipments at the same time? Talk about a lot of extra, unnecessary work. Freight consolidation helps because you can easily track fewer shipments at a time while still getting the cargo you need to be shipped out on time. It’s not just the freight itself that gets consolidated; it’s also your overall supply chain management. This streamlined practice is easier to manage and provides more flexibility for your business.

Utilizing freight consolidation to aid in freight management can also help your business in the long term. Consistent, reliable freight consolidation shipping routines mean you can stay ahead of the game in terms of inventory supply and also helps in reducing the number of delayed deliveries or other discrepancies many shippers face.

#3: Win Your Customers

With all the changes in our world impacting the freight shipping industry, managing customer shipping expectations is one of the toughest things small businesses and supply chain managers have to adapt to. Customers want lesser transit times, lower costs, and increased reliability in supply chains. With freight consolidation, your customers can see reduced shipping transit times, faster delivery times, as well as lower shipping rates. Even though there are no guarantees in freight shipping, you and your customers lessen the chances of transit issues when you use freight consolidation effectively.

Freight consolidation helps everyone in the shipping process, from shippers to customers and even the carriers. But you don’t have to go it alone! Partner with a third-party logistics company (3PL) like FreightCenter today and empower your business to make freight shipping even easier! With our powerful TMS technology centralizing the search for solutions all in one place, you can optimize your supply chain to the fullest with consolidated freight services.

Your very own personalized shipping representative is ready to help! Get a free online quote or call (844)212-7447 today.