Freight platform Convoy announced Tuesday it has added a new feature for its shipper clients, giving them the capability to secure dedicated capacity at a fixed rate for a time period of choice.
Just a little under two weeks after rolling out instant bid responses for its carrier clients, Convoy has now launched a new service, Dedicated On Demand.
“Historically [carriers] sign a multiyear agreement for a set price and the driver shows up like clockwork every day,” Amir Pelleg, Convoy’s vice president of carrier and marketplace, told FreightWaves. “The problem for shippers is if the volume is predicted wrong, which happens very frequently, then carrier assets are underutilized and [they] incur the cost of not moving those assets. If more volume comes in than expected, shippers find themselves falling down their routing guide, experiencing variable pricing and inconsistent compliance from its carrier network.”
According to Pelleg, Convoy’s dedicated service will allow shippers to avoid those hurdles, giving them the capacity they need when necessary and providing shippers the flexibility to change their dedicated needs when applicable.
“If you experience a surge, we can add more carriers,” said Pelleg. “If the shipper is getting less volume than they expected, we are able to go get other work to those drivers.”
Pelleg explained that the key to making this service reliable is committing the same assets to these shippers, giving them familiar faces to see throughout the contract period.
“We offer our very best performing carriers to do the consistent work for us on long-term contracts,” he said. “This is a win for them because it gives them predictable freight they can then grow their business with. Typically this arrangement isn’t an option for small carriers.”
Combining this service with its Hi-Fi Visibility, which launched in September, Convoy now can view a full picture of the supply chain footprint of a company, from its routing guides to facility operations.
“We now have total visibility in a facility, including all the loads coming in and out of that customer,” Pelleg said. “We can unlock where the company’s inefficiencies are. Where is the bottleneck in this facility? We can then work internally with the shipper to improve those operations and improve its carrier relationships. That higher utilization that we are able to achieve for our carrier eventually goes right back to the shipper’s pocket.”
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