Type of Parties

• Carriers
• Shippers/Customers
• Brokers
  • connect shippers and carriers and oversee the movement of freight
  • rarely own warehouses, trucks, or physical freight items.
• Freight Forwarders
  • negotiates transportation rates with the carriers
  • contract with a carrier to move the goods.
  • provides cargo insurance to protect the goods transported.
  • take possession of cargo
  • they need warehouses, trucks, packing supplies, and personnel
  • arrange the shipping of freight for their customers
  • may store products for their customers
  • organizes shipments for individuals or corporations to get goods from origin to destination
  • guides through the transportation of customers cargo, requesting the documents customers require for the transportation and border crossing. - advises customers on the rules and procedures for importing and exporting goods to a specific country.

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Broker vs. Freight Forwarder

• Broker
  • coordinates the connection between shippers and carriers
• Freight Forwarder
  • takes possession of the freight and often stores, packs, and ships it.
  • e.g.) Penske, DHL

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Type of Trucks

• Dry Van
  • most common type of trailer
  • can haul a variety of products, both short and long distances.
  • fully enclosed trailer where the freight is typically loaded and unloaded from the rear of the trailer
  • great job of protecting cargo
• Flatbed
  • flat and has open sides and back
  • allows the cargo to be loaded and unloaded from the sides or the back of the trailer without interference from the trailer itself
• Reefer
  • refrigerated container
  • can also carry dry goods and other temperature-sensitive loads
  • more expensive

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Back-haul vs. Front-haul vs. Over-haul

• Back-haul
  • return trip back from the original destination point to the point of origin
  • Utilizing the backhaul saves time, money, and environmental resources.
• Front-haul
  • origin to destination
• Over-haul

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Intermodal vs. Multimodal

• Intermodal
  • I thought it referred to “transportation on rails”?????
  • process of moving cargo between a variety of different transportation methods (freight, air, motor carriers, etc.), but all under the same company.
• Multimodal
  • similar to intermodal in that it moves cargo via multiple methods
  • but under different companies for each provider

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LIFO vs. FIFO

• LIFO
  • Last In, First Out
  • last products in are the first products shipped out
• FIFO
  • First In, First Out
  • first products to come in to the warehouse, are the first products to be shipped out
• Deciding which you want can affect your product’s quality, especially if it’s food-related

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Dead-head

• has no cargo moved within a trip
• e.g) a truck goes from Nashville to Minneapolis with guitars, but it comes back to Nashville empty; that is a dead-head trip.
• happens because of supply and demand; there might be more demand out of China than bringing more products into China.
• Ideally, products coming out would be equal to products coming in for environmental and financial reasons, but often this is not the case.

FSC (Fuel Surcharge)

• a fuel fee that accounts for the region and the distance traveled
• price of fuel fluctuates => FSC is negotiable

Goods in Transit

• products that have been shipped out but haven’t yet been received by the customer
• also called: transit inventory or stock in transit

Freight Forwarding firms

• leader in the logistics indstury
• Not 3PL but large companies like DHL that large volumes of goods over land, air, and sea
• combines many goods into large shipments that they can ship for lower rates than competitors
• Their volume allows for them to offer low rates than they could otherwise

Order Fulfillment

• kinda like Amazon’s fulfillment service where Amazon takes care of shipping your items
• let’s say you are a candle-making factory
• when a warehouse or 3PL provider receives your client’s orders through your company and packages and ships it out for you – without you having to touch a single piece of packing tape
• With pandemic, many small online stores are getting bigger, with more orders than they can handle without dedicating their entire home to piles of boxes and stacks of labels

Kitting

• when you pre-assemble individual items into ready to ship kits
• great option if you have a top selling order (e.g. your 3 most popular items or a new client gift package) that you ship regularly
• Having your order fulfillment provider kit them upfront will save you time and money in the long-haul.

Embargo

• an order to restrict the hauling of cargo
• placed between countries to prohibit exporting or importing in general, or just on a specific product.

Actual Time of Arrival (A.T.A.)

• when a container, cargo, railcar, etc. arrives at a certain point

Cross Docking

• unloading cargo from a truck and then directly loading it out on outbound trucks with almost no warehouse time in between
• great option for clients who want to reduce costs of warehousing and labor, but the timing needs to be right to send out all the products right away

Replenishment

• process of moving products and resources from a secondary warehouse location to the primary warehouse location
• sole mission is to help keep inventory flowing through the supply chain and not skip a beat with the customer’s demands of the product
• Helps keep inventory levels consistent and deliver on client orders in a timely fashion.

Reverse Logistics

• managing and focusing on the logistics of the products after the sale (everything from returns, recycling and repairs, to the management and sale of surplus products)
• About 7% of a company’s gross sales are used up by return costs; from managing returns to getting rid of surplus or expired stock

Pool Distribution

• Nope. Not a distribution of swimming pools! lol
• regular distribution of orders to multiple destinations within a certain geographic region
• goods are shipped to regional centers to be shipped out regularly to smaller local cities and clients
• Instead of making multiple long-haul trips from Oregon to New Hampshire, a company can have a regional pool distribution center in Connecticut for the entire NE seaboard
• cost saving way to make smaller shipments regularly to many clients.

Reference:

• https://citi-cargo.com/
• https://truckstop.com/blog/dry-van-vs-reefer-which-is-best/
• https://mexicomlogistics.com/why-shippers-use-a-freight-forwarder/