TIL our shipping costs dropped 30% after we switched to regional carriers

For the past two years, we used one big national carrier for all our packages from our warehouse in Boise. It was simple, but the bills kept going up. About four months ago, I decided to test something. We started sending packages going to the West Coast through a smaller regional carrier instead. The first month, the cost for those West Coast boxes was down by almost half. So we expanded it, finding different regional carriers for the Midwest and the South. Now, instead of one bill, we have three, but the total is way lower. The big change was accepting that 'one size fits all' shipping doesn't work when your customers are spread out. The regional guys are just faster and cheaper in their own zones. Has anyone else split their shipping like this and had to deal with the extra tracking systems?

3 comments

3 Comments

miller.avery3mo ago

Honestly that sounds like a total headache to manage. I mean sure the price looks better but now you've got three different companies to deal with, three sets of rules, and probably three times the customer service problems when a package gets lost. That extra time you spend sorting and tracking probably eats up a lot of the savings. Sometimes simple is worth paying for.

brooke713mo ago

Been there, done that. Spent more time on the phone with customer service than I saved on the deal. Not worth the stress.

stone.jesse1mo ago

Our Boise warehouse started using a regional carrier for West Coast stuff about a year back, and we're tracking about three different systems now too. What worked for us was setting up a simple spreadsheet that auto-generates the tracking links for each carrier based on the zip code - saved a ton of headache. I get what @miller.avery is saying about the hassle, but once you batch your pickups by zone and train the crew on which labels to use, it runs smoother. Still gotta watch those regional guys though... had one in the Midwest lose three packages in one week and their support was just one dude on a flip phone.

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