One of the first steps for shipping is to make a booking with your carrier.  Your load will never arrive on time if you cannot ship on time. 

In the last month or so, and as often happens at some point of every year, bookings got really tight, capacity tightened, and spot rates jumped.  

We originally set up our suppliers to do our bookings with our carriers.  We provided them with a detailed routing guide.   We were the Beneficial Cargo Owner and the importer, buying on FOB terms.   

Then the first big crisis hit: No space was available, and our bookings were being turned down or even worse, not responded to at all.  The bookings were being requested by the carrier specified, but they were not confirming them.   And our suppliers were not closely monitoring the situation.  We lost a week every time, and with that we were losing the sailing dates we needed. 

In reviewing these issues, my team decided we had to take back the booking process.  We could not rely on our suppliers when things got tough.  We could not rely on our suppliers spread across the world to be diligent and stay after the carriers throughout.  Nor could we rely on them to alert us promptly on issues.  

Each time we were losing multiple days before we even knew there was problem.    On top of that, we were losing the sailing dates we needed!

We could not to take it over ourselves from our US based office.   There were too many time zones, local customs and languages involved. 

The Solution: We found a partner who would be neutral and would not be a competitor to our carrier and NVOs. A partner to act on our behalf.  We needed to find an origin management firm who had a control tower to monitor their local teams in each shipping port.  This partner had to have good local connections with key players including our carriers' local offices and they needed to know how to quickly to alternative carriers or forwarders to get shipments booked and moving on time. 

The bottom line: We outsourced to do what we needed but could not do ourselves.

 In 2020, as Covid really impacted us and shipping went crazy, our team and our partner worked many long hours to come up with alternatives and solutions to get our critical products moved.   After all, we were in the PPE business, Protective Personal Equipment!   Considering the difficult year that it was, our success was heavily supported by having that program already in place!

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Andy G WOWL.io