The need for improved visibility into your company’s transportation shipments is increasing in importance as supply chain issues persist around the world. In order to ensure that trucked cargo arrives at its destination on time and within budget, it is recommended that you adhere to the best practises outlined below.
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Accuracy Is Essential:
In many cases, the arrival time of a shipment is most affected by the measures made before it leaves. That’s why it’s crucial to have reliable data at your disposal. The exact dimensions and weight of a shipment must be recorded, especially in paperless Electronic data interchange deals. Rounding up any fractions is recommended for safety purposes.
Incorrect measurements of a package necessitate that the shipping company make course corrections. Because shipping companies determine their own freight weight regulations, they can delay your shipments and raise your prices. The U.S. Department of Transportation establishes these, and noncompliance carries huge consequences for businesses.
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All About AEI Tags:
Start employing automatic equipment identification (AEI) tags, a vital tool for data collection in freight management, if you haven’t already. These 30-inch square tags are mounted on brackets approximately four feet off the ground on semi trucks and scanned by radio signal when they move through a reader.
The trucking company’s logistics team may track the location of a shipment in real time and see details on the truck being used to transport the goods, the type of truck being used, and the road on which the shipment is travelling. When using AEI tags or aei readers you may instantly check to see if your packages have arrived where they should. They also make it easy to inform shipping firms and their clients of this data.
In addition to warning of delays, AEI labels can be used to help you find your way around. As opposed to barcodes or other visual systems, the data transmission of RFID tags is unaffected by environmental factors such as snow, rain, or mud. And because they are mounted on vehicles, you can also monitor your most valuable assets, the trucks.
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Package Properly:
Improper packaging is a common cause of shipment delays; taking preventative actions will help keep your cargo on schedule. A standard 40” x 48” pallet will be used to transport your goods. Contact your freight company for guidance on packaging if your shipment won’t fit on a typical pallet.
Oversized items might cause transportation delays because the freight firm must repack the package (and your costs are likely to go up, too). Here are some things to keep in mind to ensure your trucking shipment arrives safely and on time:
- Make sure there is no empty space in any of the boxes. Shipping damage can be avoided by not leaving space for air around your items.
- Pack larger boxes at the bottom and lighter ones higher up when stacking or lining them up. No boxes should be dangling over the edge of the pallet, as this can cause damage to the goods inside.
- If feasible, try to uniformly disperse the load inside each container.
- You can prevent moving boxes by inserting flat cardboard pieces between each one.
- Use three to five layers of high-quality shrink wrap and wrap the pallet thoroughly.
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Know your Freight’s Destination:
If there aren’t enough people at the receiving end to accept the item, then it won’t matter how well-prepared the shipment is in terms of information, packaging, or tracking. Likewise if a loading dock is not present. You can avoid these problems by double-checking the freight’s destination information before sending it off.