By Rob Martinez
PARCEL PRICING SURVEY – PARCEL FORUM RESULTS UNVEILED
O
ne of the most common challenges I hear from volume parcel shippers is that they don’t know how good — or bad — are the incentives, terms and structure of their carrier pricing agreements. Why? Amongst many factors, the majority of carrier contracts include confidentiality language that precludes shippers from sharing information. Moreover, the carriers are focused on package yield management. As public companies, their mandate from shareholders is to sell your business at the highest rates possible while still retaining you as a customer. Of course, no shipper would ever negotiate a contract and knowingly leave
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money on the table. But the reality is that some of you have done a better job than others when it comes to negotiating the most favorable rates and terms. How can you be certain your rates are truly best-in-class? How do you obtain parcel pricing benchmarks, especially given contract confidentiality concerns? Shipware and PARCEL set out to provide shippers with a comprehensive set of parcel pricing benchmarks. During last year’s PARCEL Forum (October 2014), dozens of shippers participated in a live pricing survey. We asked the questions, you provided responses. Contracts were not shared, but rather, participating shippers responded to survey questions based on ranges. Moreover, survey responses were entirely blinded.