Buying Leverage - going to market and finding multiple carriers that you may not have found on your own.
- Albert M. Robert, National Account Manager - LTL, 24 years of Industry Experience

Aside from transportation expertise, 3PLs give the client a single point of contact for all bid phase issues or questions, including pre-move, execution, and post move.
- Ted Moore, Rail Product Manager, 26 years of Industry Experience

A 3PL offers everything you need in one location - transportation, freight management, and other activities. In its simplest form, a 3PL coordinates and manages functions for better transportation and supply chain efficiency.
- Joetta Merrow, Pricing Manager, 15 years of Industry Experience

Logistics network optimization – beyond route optimization, a more comprehensive, but more disruptive change includes analyzing the end-to-end flows (i.e. determining the existing inbound flows from suppliers into manufacturing and distribution centers as well as outbound flows to customers).
Load capacity optimization – it is common that a truck will deliver freight partially empty. This loss of capacity increases costs as the cost to deliver freight with a truck half-loaded vs. fully-loaded is similar. For LTL, this is not an issue, but for TL deliveries, companies can reduce their cost per lb by consolidating the loads from multiple deliveries for routes originating from the same location.
- Larry Vasconez, Director Multimodal Sales, 20 years of Industry Experience

The #1 benefit of using a 3PL is utilizing specialized technology. These technologies provide systems and tools designed to maximize the time and resources of a transportation operation. By providing real time visibility across the process, this gives the customer the ability to accurately plan manufacturing and distribution activities.
- Donovan Boisselle, Enterprise Business Development Director; 14 years of Industry Experience

Flexibility. The benefit of flexibility reaches into capacity, services, intel, and analysis for our customers.
- Jeff Greenwell, Managing Director; SRM, 21 years of Industry Experience

Project coordination by people who are experienced and familiar with all aspects of the delivery. We can make sure that no one "drops the ball" from start to finish.
- Kathy Knapp, Project Pricing Manager, 13.5 years of Industry Experience

To give our customers the flexibility within their supply chain that isn’t driven on the need to move an asset. 3PLs core benefit is to understand the market and to bring this knowledge to customers. Which in turn, customers, can take this knowledge, apply it to key decisions, and really concentrate on what they do best, which is growing their business.
- Mark Yonker, Managing Director, Network Sales, 17 years of Industry Experience

A strong, well-resourced 3PL is a powerful buffer against the volatility of the of the market. The immediate consideration is rate/price and the forces that cause fluctuation there, but there are many other areas where costs seep in. Managing carriers takes time; on the phone, tracking paperwork, tracing loads, etc. You have to pay an employee to do that - likely multiple employees. What about less obvious dollar-loss? How much does it cost to improve your technology in-house? Infrastructure. Training. What about future upgrades? Analysis. How many analysts to you want to recruit? What experience do they need to help you? Do they understand what pieces of data are important to your business? And once you find them, you have to pay them full-time, manage them, etc. Why not have all of that covered with one vendor? I'm sure the folks who are overworked already trying to manage your transportation and complete many other tasks could be reallocated to push more of your core competencies over the finish line. A capable 3PL filters the market to you and manages the ebbs and flows so you don't have to.
- Ian Rozmiarek, Enterprise Business Development Director; 6 years of Industry Experience