Transportation is easy. Just pick up one item at point A, load it into a vehicle, and drive it to point B. For people outside of the trucking industry, it can be easy to make this mistake. But trucking companies have to do many things so that this transit from point A to point B occurs in the best possible way. Especially because of the large number of tasks that are hidden behind this simplification.
What trucking companies do to make your shipments perfect
Route management in trucking companies
We all want competitive prices when we buy a good or a service. In transportation, the first step for trucking companies to be efficient is to have good route management. Technology is helping in these processes, with programs that help design the most efficient routes, calculate schedules, distances, driving times, etc. However, the presence of professionals who know how to manage a fleet of vehicles and drivers is still essential.
Warehouse staff
A large part of the customers’ merchandise passes through the hands -or pallet trucks- of the warehouse staff. They also prepare campaigns, label merchandise, improve the preparation of pallets by shrink-wrapping, strapping and adding corner protectors. A discreet and silent job, but which makes your merchandise travel safer and suffer fewer incidents. Nobody is going to applaud them because their merchandise has avoided a breakage, but the incident will jump as soon as they mislabel one shipment among thousands.
Customer Support
The mistake of thinking that customer service people only work from a claim is common. Quite the contrary, the customer service staff of a logistics operator such as Transgesa works proactively and monitors deliveries so that they are made on the scheduled date. This follow-up is essential for trucking companies that want to differentiate themselves through excellent service.
Commercial team
If you ask a salesperson, they’ll probably tell you that customers like nothing more than ordering things outside of standard services. Weights, dimensions, places with difficult access, unusual hours… Customers sometimes need things that deviate from the normal and sales representatives are essential to respond to them.
To achieve this, they need to know the company’s services in depth and work together with the operations departments, to get the most out of what can be done, even if it is outside the service manuals.
Accounting and billing
There are clients whose billing is simple. Sometimes even despite having a large turnover. But there are clients who need more complex billing. Some need to invoice for campaigns (including some for shipments), others include references or purchase orders, others require different types of fees for various reasons -if they are campaigns or single shipments, if your merchandise leaves from one collection point or from another, etc.-.
To this is added the correct integration of extra costs, managing payments such as taxes on shipments to the Canary Islands and a long etcetera. Not only is this essential to keep machinery running, but its accuracy and clarity increase customer confidence in trucking companies.