Port congestion and a lack of capacity have many shippers feeling uneasy. When times are tough, it’s best to have a team that has your back.
Julie Colona, director of forwarding solutions and NVOCC at UniGroup, believes while it’s not always easy, there is a solution for every logistics challenge. She highlighted the company’s unique project management team with Timothy Dooner and Michael Vincent on the FreightWavesTV show WHAT THE TRUCK?!?
“When a customer engages a logistics provider that has a dedicated project management team, they can rely on the expertise of the logistics partner to create a complete supply chain solution,” Colona said.
The expert logistics team can manage everything from single-mode transportation to widespread multimodal operations.
The reasons why many turn to UniGroup Worldwide’s project management services are numerous. Colona attributes it to the growing need for carriers to streamline their communication abilities with their customers on top of providing better shipment visibility. This is the case for many shippers in desperate need of answers on shipments tied up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, for instance, anxiously having to schedule and reschedule multimodal movements.
Colona is adamant that silence cannot be an alternative to answering customers’ questions. They deserve answers, she said, and shippers owe them the tough conversations instead of leaving them in the dark.
“Now more than ever, customers demand visibility, transparency and streamlined communication from their logistics providers. Utilizing a project management type of approach allows that,” Colona said. “There’s not as many parties needed to reach out to track freight or find out where their freight is through the supply chain funnel.”
In addition, a project management control tower approach with a single point of contact eliminates the need for the customer to have to try to manage multiple providers. Colona added that it allows customers to focus on more important tasks while the project management team manages their supply chain.
UniGroup provides end-to-end solutions for domestic transportation such as full-truckload, less-than-truckload and final mile. It also provides warehousing services, inventory distribution and customs brokering, in addition to ocean and air freight and reverse logistics.
The asset-based company is a subsidiary of UniGroup, the parent company of United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit, among other transportation-related companies. These networks combined power UniGroup’s 500-plus nationwide agent location network of high-touch moving professionals, specializing in the unique and hard-to-service transportation jobs.
“There’s a solution for everything in the logistics world — there just may not be an easy path to get there,” Colona said. “I tell my team every day that if it was easy, every logistics provider out there would be doing it. For cases where it’s not easy, that’s what UniGroup does. We take the hard-to-handle and the difficult, and we create real solutions that are successful for our customers.”
