The Case for Contract Freight: Refocusing Shipper Procurement Strategies on Fundamentals in 2021

In the transportation industry, we have seen a great deal of innovation emerge as it relates to spot market solutions—digital brokerage, on-demand freight solutions, optimized load boards, the list goes on. And while many of these solutions cater to very real challenges that shippers encounter day-to-day, few of them contribute to a more enduring transportation strategy.

The occasional capacity misalignment is a cost of doing business, but disruptions that systemically occur over time are costly, no matter how high-tech the spot market has become. The market is sorely missing solutions that address and mitigate capacity failures that become a pattern—and this should be done at the contract level.

This webinar addresses a few questions:

• If freight contracts make up the lion’s share of a transportation network, why is the industry disproportionately focusing its strategic energy on filling the gaps of routing guides?

• Why are shippers putting so much weight behind the band aids, when the root cause of a broken system could be attended to?

• How can shippers refocus their strategy on strengthening the bulk of their network to decrease the need for ongoing spot market activity?

As new spot market players continue to innovate and investments pour in, shippers should remember that their true success comes from a strong contract freight network that operates as optimally as possible.