Outsource your logistics headaches? See, track and relax
Getting products from point A to point B usually involves a whole alphabet of trouble. Even when you’ve organized transport with the cheapest or fastest providers you can find, too much time still gets spent on short-term firefighting.
We all know 3PL. But let’s consider 2PL. Running second-party logistics (2PL) means managing your own network of transport companies as if they were your own. Transport operations shouldn’t be the focus of your company but let’s look at some of the troubles that happen when you run logistics by the seat of your pants:
– tracking trucks on third-party sites via fragile APIs
– sorting invoices from multiple services providers
– chasing over-charges and matching paperwork
– making full loads out of multiple parts
All that time spent putting out fires means expensive professionals can’t give their best value. And the people with experience in the company are too busy to strategize and plan. Even if new opportunities come knocking at the door, traffic managers and IT departments are at capacity, stuck in Excel docs, or troubleshooting legacy systems.
SMEs using 2PL probably aren’t hiring new employees, and we know training staff is impossible for overstretched businesses, especially when the needed skillset is best learned on the job. And who has time to train new hires when you’re barely getting ahead of shipments as it is?
KCH is a Third-Party Logistics (3PL) provider that takes the worry away. Established in 2004, the company has grown organically to provide freight services across the US. You could hire, train, and manage a new team, but why? And why pay more? For a lower cost, you can outsource to KCH, and by doing so, you outsource your headaches, too!
Consider some of the advantages. If they weren’t wasting time debugging and fighting fires, IT professionals could do the specialized work that you pay them to. KCH leverages an industry-standard transport management system (TMS) to bring each aspect of freight transportation together in one easy-to-use portal.
Through the portal, businesses can get real-time information on the whereabouts of their products and the progress of deliveries. This means companies no longer need to use unreliable trackers on service provider websites or “updates” that are 24 hours out of date.
The Trucker Tools app that KCH uses has other benefits, too. Trucks are less likely to be held up by road closure with weather tracking and monitored traffic patterns. Best of all, Trucker Tools makes sure that drivers refill at the lowest possible prices, and those savings on fuel are passed back to you, the customer.
A specialty that KCH offers is intermodal shipping solutions. They take over the stress of negotiating with multiple parties just to get product where it should be, when it should be. Instead of juggling prices and likely several Excel sheets to negotiate the best value, you can see it right there on a single screen.
Another time and energy-saving service is LTL coordination with the range of options, transparency, and cost that you’d expect from FTL.
In 2023 there are already 597,802 long-distance freight trucking businesses in the US. Maybe you’ve been exhausting yourself looking for better deals or had sleepless nights worrying about operational details that only you know. KCH uses pre-screened asset-based carrier partners to set those worries at rest.
Shipping services enabled through KCH are as reliable booked two hours ahead of time as booked two months in advance. Solutions are personalized, fast, and friendly and are provided by a company staffed with personnel who are logistics specialists. Whatever your specific needs, the KCH Transportation team will have heard of it (or something like it), and they already speak your language. When CKS Packaging approached KCH with a last-minute request, KCH’s rescue event launched less than 10 minutes after the request.
Customer service at KCH is important: they deliver a “white glove” service to fulfill your company’s product transportation. We’ve all gotten used to hold music, but superfast call-back support by KCH customer service means being second in the queue is over.
KCH can also handle shipments that need special treatment. Getting an over-dimensional or HAZMAT shipment to where it needs to be won’t take extra planning or worry. KCH handles (for instance) permits ahead of schedule and meets safety requirements in every State that your product goes through.
The scope of KCH’s services doesn’t mean a hard-to-learn system for brokering transportation. Remember, the team is about logistics, not high-end tech! The customer portal has all the information needed to keep you up to date: what’s where, when will it arrive, when can it be picked up. Because the site is so simple, the handover of responsibility at shift change can happen smoothly and without delaying any product movement.
Dependable shipping, as a given, means you can start growing your business. KCH is an affiliate of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), which has a no-fail expectation for any mission. Read how FEMA’s Hurricane Ida response relied on KCH’s system of tracking and documentation to ensure no-fail.
To read full case studies on KCH’s shipping solutions and customer testimonials or to get a quote within minutes, visit the website at https://kchtrans.com/.