Choosing LTL Carriers: A Customer's Perspective

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Why do you use both national and local carriers?

National players like Old Dominion and XPO often don't compete well on my first component, service level. They also don't often compete as well on cost, my second component. Quality, which I define as Over Shortage and Damage (OS&D), can be a wash. In our experience, when you have these tight regions where you're running, let's say, 500 miles or less, the larger guys can handle it, but they don't perform well enough on service and cost.

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Why is that?

There could be several reasons. Regional local players have been operating in those spaces for so long that they've mastered the 500 miles or less segment. Anecdotally, they tend to care more for their larger customers because they rely on them a lot. On the other hand, larger LTL carriers wouldn't be significantly affected if they lost a client like John Deere.

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Why work with several carriers given your size? Isn't working with one large carrier more beneficial? I understand there's an element of risk, but wouldn't this simplify your backend processes? You could leverage price and gain more bargaining power. Why work with multiple carriers?

When we plug in the orders of the day, certain LTL carriers are more competitive in certain lanes. If we just gave that to one carrier, they would essentially build out what works best for their network into the pricing for us, and we would lose the value.

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