Last week was a new customer feedback milestone for us. We often get feedback — we even ask for it a lot — but last week delivered more feedback than we’re accustomed to. We’d love to be able to tell you it was all good, but that wasn’t the case. Five customers did share the good; five told us of their successes this year with biocontrol. They were extremely pleased. Three more, however, complained about shipping. Those three, amazingly, all said the same thing, using the same words: Shipping is Ridiculous.
We’re not sure what they expected us to say, or do. They didn’t share that part. We did apologize for the embarrassingly high rates and told them we fully agree with their assessment. “Yes,” we said, “shipping is ridiculous.” It’s our number one expense over any single product vendor and even payroll. This doesn’t solve the problem, of course, but we don’t have our fingers on the solution’s pulse. Shipping is ridiculous: it’s an unabashed fact. The only thing we can try to do is explain why.
The Problem
In order to ship most biocontrols, an expedited transportation method must be used. This is for a couple of reasons: First the health of the biocontrols is priority one. Remember, we don’t just guarantee our bugs arrive to you alive, they must also be healthy and capable of doing what they were purchased to do. And shipping by less expeditious methods does have an impact on the quality of these organisms; Second, timing. The week is short and the bugs shouldn’t be in transit over the weekend or any longer than they have to be.
These reasons aren’t negotiable. We’re not going to start conducting bad business to satisfy the perceived wants and needs of our customers, not when the perception is wrong and kowtowing to it will hurt them more than high freight ever will. Sure they might feel better at first, but we like those bits of positive feedback from customers telling us the bugs they bought are kicking butt. If we start cheating the system to lower freight, the success rate will rapidly spiral into decline.
We are part of a challenging industry. Shipping perishables is hard. And in our case it’s not a simple manner of keeping lobsters from overheating or drying out, or keeping flash-frozen steaks from thawing. The brand of perishability we deal with is much more temperamental. We cannot throw caution to the wind or take shortcuts. We have to keep our good bugs alive and healthy. We have to ship and operate in a much more narrow temperature range, and we have to mix various species with differing requirements. It’s an enormously challenging trade.
Not taking unnecessary chances and putting the people (and their businesses) who rely on our shipments at risk means we are in the unfortunate position of having limited choices. We have long determined that shipping overnight (which fortunately is done by less expensive ground services within New England) is a necessary evil. Nothing new there, we shared our feelings about our Killer Freight two years ago.
Our Options
So what are we to do? We must ship overnight. Someone may offer the suggestion that we find a different courier company. Well let’s look at the options available.
- Airborne Express/DHL »
- We used to use Airborne Express (now owned by DHL). They used to be a lot less than the big boys back then, but their service was barely passable. Every week about 30% of our packages would get lost, broken, or suffer some other wrath of the freight Gods. They could not service the entire country nor could they help us with our local shipments. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when one Airborne driver saved himself a five mile delivery loop by dropping off our package at our customer’s local post office and shipping it by the USPS’s Parcel Post service. Even though the package was intra-town, it took a week to get to our customer. Airborne customer service didn’t help us — they claimed to not understand what the problem was, the package did get delivered after all. It is our understanding, based on our last experience (a while ago), that this company’s service isn’t much better than it was back then, yet for a budget courier the prices are now on par with those of the big boys mentioned below.
- United States Parcel Service (USPS) »
- Speaking of postal service, one might wonder why we don’t try them. Well, based on our own experiences they don’t even compare to the dedicated freight couriers in terms of service, ability, and features. Despite past television commercials declaring their competitive spirit and how they rival UPS and FedEx, we find it’s a comparison of apples to oranges. We cannot get the level of service we need from the post office — we have tried — they don’t service all the locations (overnight) that we need, and what they do offer that comes close is almost as expensive. The USPS isn’t a dedicated freight courier, but they have cornered the letter-delivery market and they do it well. We find this to be their strong suit with everything else coming in a distant second. We’ll use them for letters.
- Federal Express (FedEx) »
- FedEx should be a real contender for our business — it’s quite substantial. Four times, though, we have requested a visit from a FedEx representative, and four times all they were willing to do was fax us a price sheet. If we can’t get a representative to even sit down with us, we don’t exactly feel comfortable that they’d be beneficial to us. Moreover, FedEx cannot ship overnight to all locations (only UPS can claim that), and they are just as pricey as UPS if not more so based on the last price sheet we saw. Adding to that, while FedEx does now offer ground services, we’ve heard from the street that it isn’t anywhere near the level of UPS’s.
- United Parcel Service (UPS) »
- So, in light of all that noted above, right now we use UPS. We have for years. We chose them because they were willing to meet our logistical needs (odd hours, special handling, etc.) We chose them because they were willing to work with us — they showed up within hours of our first meeting request. And because every address in the United States can be delivered overnight and they have time-tested ground services. And last but not least, they are extremely reliable. But, like the others, UPS is expensive. Their rates are up there with the others, and even more expensive than some. At least, though, you get what you pay for. Fewer than 1% of our packages have transit issues, and most of those are solved before the problem becomes irrevocably unsolvable.
These are our options, and in some cases our opinion based on feedback we hear from others and our own last experiences. We chose the one that we felt was in everyone’s best interest.
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Kip Kussman responds:
Posted: August 1st, 2008 at 10:36 pm →
We are facing the same problem with freight costs. A customer who buys a 400.00 bamboo bed does not understand why it costs 350.00 to ship it.