Interesting discussion here today; I don't think that the answer is to eliminate brokers from the equation. As a carrier primarily, that brokers a very small amount of customer freight when we cannot move ourselves, where I see a lot of frustration in our operations is when we see little value being added by a broker for their service. Examples of this are deliveries with no dock/fork lift etc., no phone numbers, inaccurate pick up or delivery info, bad customs broker info, inaccurate ready times etc. When we move freight with another carrier of ours (Us as the broker), we confirm all information from our customer prior to selling the freight to another carrier, just as if we were sending our own truck on the move, all in advance of booking a truck to try and avoid any surprises or miss-communications. I am not saying this is a broker only problem, we get bad info from some carriers as well we work with, but my point is brokers make sense where value can be added to the freight movement, and good information is a big part of this process (In particular with LTL mostly for us). I think that with the amount of infrastructure we put in place over the years as a carrier to meet "broker" demands we now have ability to offer similar value added services to customers direct. Just like carriers, there are quality and poor brokers and we will need both for the foreseeable future, what needs to adjust is the value added by "some" brokers. Standard business payment terms are 30 days, yet our broker payments are about 50% over 60 days, often into 90 days; as a broker to a carrier I think you should be aware of the fact that if you pay your bills in 30 days or less, as a general rule, a quality carrier would prefer to work with you each time (And help to avoid the carriers who's first question to you is "Wathcu Pay?", which gets brokers in trouble with their customers all the time from posts we read on here), a big part of our unforeseen cost when working with a broker is floating the payment extension beyond terms; again, some "carriers" that broker to us are just as bad if not worse in some cases on my weekly receivable list, but this is something that really has to change across the industry. All our bills on the carrier side are due in 7 days, 14 days, or a month at the most! We work with brokers all the time, but to summarize some main challenges from our perspective here at F1 to help brokers add value to their services to a carrier, are to provide accurate/verified information (and putting "Call ahead", as I know 1 broker customer of ours that is very active on here does consistently on every pick up and every delivery point to try and avoid costs due to bad information you did not bother to verify yourself first, and slow payments @ 60-90 days... is not value added BTW) and decrease days to pay on your invoice to within 30 day terms. I hate feeling like we are a 3rd parties bank line of credit between their customer payment and the payment to us; as this is a small margin business already, let alone floating interest costs (if you are currently paying carriers over 30 days, and you know who you are out there, that is too long...). To be continued I am sure lol...just some food for thought
