5 Ways to Lower Costs on Your Warehouse-to-Warehouse Shipping

Reducing your freight on shipping in and out of your warehouse ultimately means you’re increasing your profit on sales. However, what does it take to reduce those costs? After all, given how important and time-critical today’s shipments are, how can a company go about reducing its warehouse-to-warehouse freight costs? Well, the following are examples of some of the strategies you can employ to reduce your shipping expenses.

Vendor Consolidation

One of the biggest cost drivers for warehouse managers is managing multiple shipments from multiple vendors. The best approach is to use vendor consolidation where larger volumes of products are shipped from one warehouse location and one vendor. Reducing the vendor base is a significant way to reduce transit costs while simplifying how you manage your company’s payables.

Packaging

A large part of the costs associated with shipping are due to poor packaging. Adopting best practices with respect to shipping product is essential. This often involves using large pallets for heavy shipments, while also using industrial belts and ties to secure large volume products. Proper packaging is critical to protecting against damage.

Shipment Consolidation

If you own these warehouses, and need to reduce your warehouse-to-warehouse shipping costs, then holding off on that next shipment until you have a full-truck load (FTL) is a guaranteed way to reduce expenses. Less-than truck loads (LTL) shipments are always more expensive when compared to LTL shipments. Another Make this a priority for those shipments that aren’t time-critical. It may be more beneficial in the long run as well if you have your won mode of transportation for shipping. Places like Arrow Truck Sales have a variety of new and used trucks available for purchase so that you can design and control your own shipping when possible.

Comparison Shopping

Sometimes reducing costs simply comes down to negotiating with freight companies. To do that means you must have multiple options and constantly comparison shop different routes, INCO terms and costs. Keep your shipping companies on their toes by constantly taking advantage of the best possible routes and fees. After all, every dollar saved in warehouse management and shipping costs goes right to your company’s bottom line.

Combined Shipments

This is entirely different from shipment consolidation. Our aforementioned example is about reducing costs for those warehouses your company owns by waiting until you have an FTL shipment. However, in this case, the approach is to combine your shipments with those of companies in your immediate area. Granted, most shipping companies will offer this as a service, or at the very least, they will try and make sure to combine as many products from different companies within the truck as possible. After all, the more they ship within a truck, the higher their profit. However, there are always those times where you have product that isn’t time-critical. Combining those volumes with volumes of other companies in your area will help to reduce your company’s freight bill. There are a number of online resources and aps that allow you to do just that. Reducing your freight on shipping is sure to improve your profit on sales. Make sure you approach the problem from the mindset of getting as many FTL shipments as possible.