A better way to share the gains of collaborative shipping

Shipping certainly has its challenges these days. On the one hand, companies are under pressure to deliver orders faster than ever. On the other hand, trucks transporting goods drive around 40% empty on average. In fact, various studies show that 25% of all trucks are entirely empty.

That makes it tough to deliver orders faster than ever without a significant increase in the number of trucks on the road. Unless, of course, new opportunities to fill trucks more completely are up for consideration. Collaborative shipping is just such an option.

In fact, collaborative shipping has sufficient promise that it is evolving from an occasional pilot toward achieving critical mass within industry, promising to improve logistics efficiency significantly. Quite simply, collaborative shipping, also known as shared shipping, manages fluctuations in supply and demand as parties from different supply chains join forces to combine their shipping operations most efficiently.

Companies combining shipping capacities is neither new nor unique. However, in today’s approach, companies collaborate differently than in the past. As required, they adjust their planning and bring forward or delay the dispatch of their goods when it’s most advantageous to all. That’s new and different.

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