Carriers continue to excel in meeting customer expectations, and as a result, the FourKites’ Q4 Premier Carrier List has more carriers on it than any previous list, the company announced this week. In addition, 119 carriers have made the list in four consecutive quarters and 28 have qualified in each quarter the company has announced a Premier Carriers List.
In all, the Q4 list features 382 global carriers, brokers and third-party logistics providers across all modes.
“Visibility has become increasingly critical given the supply chain challenges of 2020. The FourKites Premier Carrier List highlights carriers that have truly made visibility a priority during these unprecedented times,” said Bill Kropf, vice president of client management at Capstone Logistics, which is one of the carriers. “At Capstone, we’ve made visibility part of our DNA because we understand the end-to-end value it brings to our partners, and ultimately to their customers. We are excited to do our part in reducing supply chain waste.”
In order to be included on the Premier Carrier List, carriers must demonstrate operational excellence by meeting a set of qualifications defined by FourKites. These consistency metrics evaluate both the number of location updates on a given load and the quality of those updates. To qualify, Premier Carriers must track with 85% consistency.
Compared to non-premier carriers, Premier Carriers, on average, achieve 30% better on-time delivery performance, manage over 2 million pieces of equipment and see 15% annual growth in load volume, FourKItes explained.
The carriers on the Q4 list moved 2.5 million loads in the quarter, FourKites said, representing a 20% increase over the previous quarter.
Jeff Covington, the supply chain manager for Smithfield Foods, said the quarterly list offers shippers valuable insight.
“At a time when visibility has never been more integral to the on-time delivery of our shipments, FourKites’ Premier Carrier List continues to be a valuable asset, helping us select the carriers that are as committed to data transparency as we are,” he said. “Being able to easily identify carriers that are executing at the highest levels of service is critical to helping us remain agile through these turbulent times.”
The entire Premier Carrier List is available only to FourKites customers, although some companies have agreed to publicly release their inclusion. That list can be found here.
“FourKites continues to see unprecedented growth in the number of global carriers and freight forwarders using our platform,” said Jason Eversole, vice president of carrier operations at FourKites. “We remain committed to continuing to provide both shippers and carriers with the tools and resources they need to collaborate and cement deeper partnerships. And as we continue to introduce tools that expand the reach of supply chain visibility, including our automated yard management platform, Dynamic Yard, carriers that provide high-quality visibility data will see dramatically reduced wait times.”
FourKites offers a predictive supply chain visibility platform that calculates shipment arrival times and provides in-transit visibility. The platform covers all modes – truckload, less-than-truckload, ocean, rail, air, intermodal, courier and parcel – and is available in 176 countries.
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