We have been conducting our annual Shipper’s Choice Awards Survey for one year short of a decade yet this may have been the hardest year to date for scoring the performance of the many carriers serving Canadian shippers. The worst recession of the post-war era left both shippers and carriers scrambling to survive but moving in different directions in doing so. For shippers, the focus was on cutting costs and taking advantage of the downward pressure on rates offered by the significant capacity overhang among most modes.

For carriers the focus was on shedding equipment to balance capacity with the new and much lower demand for their services and to maintain some sort of price stability. The chart above shows how shippers scored the performance of their core LTL and TL carriers, as well as carriers in other modes, in eight key performance indicators. Note that TL carriers were given the highest shipper satisfaction scores. That’s a double-edged sword, of course, since that also indicates that service expectations are highest in the TL sector.

In fact TL carriers scored ahead of all modes in on-time performance, quality of equipment and operations, customer service, problem solving, valued-added services and employing sustainable practices. Just as impressive is the fact they accomplished all that while being graded highest for providing competitive pricing.