Volume LTL is a valuable feature of today’s supply chain because it fills the gap between LTL and truckload transportation. It can really be looked at as a mutually beneficial arrangement among shippers and carriers. These shipments can move in a carrier’s backhaul or chronic empty lanes, helping to balance the carrier’s network. The pricing is derived from transactional spot-market rates, which are often lower than contractual rates, saving shippers money.

The supply chain business is ever-changing based upon the current needs of logistics customers, and SMC³ has an array of technology solutions in the pipeline to meet new demands and needs. SMC³ creates these products after listening to the entire supply chain constituency – shippers, carriers, 3PLs and other logistics stakeholders — to gain a true industry perspective.

The SMC³ team has been hard at work cooking up numerous automated messaging options for shippers and 3PLs. Learn more about SMC³’s cornucopia of APIs.

SMC³’s chief commercial officer Brian Thompson recently sat down with MercuryGate’s John Martin on “Talking Logistics with Adrian Gonzalez” to discuss achieving visibility for LTL freight shipping and obtaining the right data that can drive efficiencies throughout the entire supply chain.

Representatives from carriers, shippers and 3PLs – basically, anyone who works in the supply chain at all – knows EDI messaging has long been the standard way to communicate among logistics stakeholders. And while it is an old technology, electronic data interchange (EDI) is so entrenched in the supply chain that companies trumpeting the refrain “EDI is dead” are getting ahead of themselves.

SMC³’s Kendra Miller is constantly in discussion with alliance partners and technology providers regarding the latest technology SMC³ has to offer and how these products can integrate seamlessly with TMS applications and help simplify the complexity of LTL rating to best fit their business needs.