A carrier offers rock-bottom rates but constantly misses delivery deadlines. The hidden costs of delays—angry customers, production stops, contract penalties—often exceed the savings. Document failures and give them a chance to improve, then split volume: cheap carrier for non-critical loads, reliable carrier for time-sensitive shipments.
Someone is asking, so what do you do when a carrier keeps missing service levels but is still significantly cheaper than the alternatives?
Good question. Price alone isn't enough if the service problems keep costing you elsewhere. So if a ship carrier keeps causing you delays, we add up that those delays actually cost. Unhappy customers, production stoppage. Often the cheap, the word cheap options isn't cheap anymore once you count that. So we also try to be clear and direct with the carrier first, show them specific misses that they caused and give them a real chance to fix it. Sometimes it's a genuine one-off, not a pattern. But if it keeps happening, we look at splitting the volume between a shipping line and another one. Keeps some volume with them if the price is still attractive for us, but move to more important or time-sensitive shipments to more reliable shipping line or carrier. If it's a critical lane, service usually has to work. So I have to look for the service if this lane is critical for me and if This customer is important for me, even if it costs more, because one missed shipment can cost more than the savings from many cheap ones. And it can cause you delays in your contract with the customers or cancellation. You can face cancellation for your contract or you cannot, you cannot ship what you agreed on. So the real question isn't, is it cheap? It is what being cheap actually costs us.
