TORONTO — The modus operandi for less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers is forever evolving. Arguably, the sector is the quickest of all transportation segments to react to changing market needs.

LTL companies, therefore, are under immense pressure to quickly adapt to customer’s changing needs, while still successfully recouping all the added costs that come with such services and still turn a decent buck or three.

In this exclusive survey, shippers identify factors
which in effect drives carrier selection.

So which fleets do it best — at least according to their customers? That’s what U.S. market research firm Mastio & Co. set out to discover. The company, which specializes in research, benchmarking, process reengineering, and market trends for specific industries, had done a couple of LTL customer-value surveys south of the border, before publishing an inaugural Canadian LTL shipper study last year — a synopsis of which has been made available to Today’s Trucking.

This exclusive value study provides in-depth analysis concerning the major buyers of LTL services in Canada by identifying factors most important to customers’ perception of value, and in effect driving carrier selection.

The data was collected in interviews with transport-related decision makers at 587 different Canadian shippers; resulting in 1,800 observations on over 200 LTL service providers the shippers had done business with in the last 12 months.

“When you look at our [shipper respondents] we’re not just talking to a company rep, we’re talking directly with people who have a relationship with the [carrier] and know something about them,” says Kevin Huntsman, director of sales and marketing.

Out of the 205 total carriers that were cited as providers by the respondents, Mastio only ranked the top 32, which the firm described as having sufficient ratings to be included in the final report.

Of those, the top nine LTL companies operating in Canada, ranked by responses by their customers to 21 possible carrier attributes, were, in order:

UPS Freight; TST Overland; Purolator; Con-Way Canada; Apex Motor Express; Yellow Corp. (Reimer Express); Meyers Transport; Midland Transport; and Kingsway Transport. (Other random carriers that made the top 20 include Vitran, Quik X, Day & Ross, Canadian Freightways, and Manitoulin Transport.)

The five most important attributes deemed by all shipper respondents are, starting with most important: shipments delivered with no shortages or damages; shipments delivered when promised; shipments picked up when promised; competitive pricing, and effective problem resolution.

Head to Head Benefit Analysis: How one carrier stacks
up to another in the view of common customers

“One attribute doesn’t necessarily constitute as being ‘better’ than another one,” says Huntsman. “It’s just what’s important to some customers. Some just prefer to play in one end of the sandbox.”

To get a good overall score, a carrier has to achieve 100 pts or higher on all the non-cost quality factors to be considered for the top of the overall index.

“We don’t just want people ranking mainly on price since price already carries such a large weight in the overall CV index score,” says Huntsman. “We already know that [all carriers] have to be good on price. That’s a given or else most won’t even be considered by the shipper. Once we get beyond that, then we can look at what the real drivers are.”

Upon request Mastio can formulate independent carrier value profiles and even conduct head-to-head comparisons between two or more carriers based on how they’re viewed by common customers. An example is in the accompanying chart (above) where carrier A is measured up against carrier B (the chart is actually a real comparison between two Canadian carriers). A trucking company can clearly see where its strengths and weaknesses are versus another service provider on a variety of factors.

“First off, it shows what you could improve upon, which is an easy thing to figure out,” says Huntsman. “But more importantly, if you truly understand what you’re good at and what other people are good at, you can be more targeted and be able to refine your script depending on the company you’re talking to.”

On the other hand, the study can also point out where truckers are wasting their time and resources.

“Some carriers,” concludes Huntsman, “might look at the analysis and say it’s not worth going after this business because they put too much value on a certain attribute, like say, price, and that’s not ‘what we as a carrier are about.'”

— To read the complete article and see the total rankings for carriers under each attribute, be sure to check out the March print issue of Today’s Trucking.