The qualities a reliable professional carrier exhibits.
I am going to focus on three qualities, honesty, communications and equipment.
Honesty – This is the most important of the three attributes. The carrier has to be honest with the customer about, pickup and delivery times and locations. If the driver is aware of damage that occurred in transit they must be up front in presenting that to the customer, not hide it and hope it doesn’t get found. This leads us into the next important characteristic of a quality carrier.
Communication – Yes that simple age old concept of communications. Communicate with the customer and broker about pickup and delivery times and locations. If there is a traffic delay, let the customer of dispatched know so they can communicate to the customer. Yes things happen, traffic delays, equipment issue, longer than anticipated delay at the previous pickup or delivery location. It’s really simple let the customer know.
Equipment – lately we have run into a lot of carriers running tired old equipment. We know it is a tough business, we run our own small fleet of trucks. The cost of entry is high. You can get into the field with older beat up equipment. However, this leads to break downs and delays. When you r equipment is in the shop it’s a twofold issue, your spending money for repairs and your not making any money because your equipment is in the shop.
So the bottom line here is to be honest with your customer, operate quality equipment and over communicate with everyone.
