Multi-Stop Steps

If you suspect that carriers reject multi-stop truckloads more often than single-stop loads, you’re only partially right. While carriers dislike specific factors about multi-stop, you can employ some strategies to make multi-stop freight more attractive to carriers and better control your costs.

Here are four ways shippers can reduce rates and increase acceptance of multi-stop loads, according to a whitepaper published by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics and TMC, a division of C.H. Robinson.

1. Plan ahead. Where possible, include multi-stop lanes in the procurement event, minimizing the introduction at time of shipment tender.

2. Use a cluster stop strategy. Clustered stops loads yield lower prices than loads with stops along the route. The key to clustered stops is to make it possible for the driver to pick up and deliver at all of the stops during business hours on a single day.

3. Use continuous moves. When you can plan continuous moves, carriers are more likely to accept them at a lower cost than multi-stop loads that are not continuous.

4. Pay a higher stop-off charge. Paying $100 per stop if there will be two or more drops can reduce the line-haul rate.