Tag: Last Mile

The Needless Complexity in the Parcel Industry

December 11, 2021

Can you remember when times were much more “simple”?
What has happened to the parcel industry? Complexity reigns everywhere you look!

Contracts: MSA’s and contracts that run from 75-150 pages and take weeks to negotiate – just so you can send parcels to your customers. And once you’re signed up there are penalties for an early out, but surcharges can be added at the carrier’s pleasure.

Pricing / Surcharges: The runaway surcharge train has left the station! DAS, EDAS, Resi, Peak, Non-Peak, Fuel, oversize, undersize, close zones, longer zones, and future surcharges that we don’t even know about yet. Shippers are going to need PhD mathematicians and actuaries to truly understand their costs!

Audits and Reconciliation: In many cases, shippers do not have any idea of the amount they are paying for parcels until their 3rd party audit firm goes through all the numbers. Where is the simplicity in that?

Labels, Certifications, New Lanes: Just the simple act of onboarding a new carrier, printing a new label, and setting up a new lane is a big investment of time and money. Why does it need to be so complicated? And why so many different labels? Why not one ‘Universal’ label for all shippers?

TnT Calculations: Is it business days or calendar days? Do we include Saturdays or Sundays? Do we deliver to all zips all days or only certain zips certain days? It gets complicated.

Carrier Diversification: Now multiply all of the above simplicity complexity by the number of new carriers a shipper wants/needs to onboard. One thing for sure: it’s going to be complicated, expensive, and time consuming, now and in the future to maintain all of these new contracts.

The solution?

Introducing AirTerra, where ‘Simplicity’ is a pillar of our Ethos. We keep it simple when it comes to contracts, pricing, visibility, onboarding, communications, and responsiveness. We have one contract, expansive last mile capacity, superior service, and support. Give us a call to learn more!

Capacity Across Every Mile

In today’s growing Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) supply chain, it’s essential to explore the benefits of diversity in first, middle and last-mile carriers.

Logistics executives measure success in miles: first, middle and last. In today’s growing Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) supply chain, it’s essential to explore the benefits of diversity in first, middle and last-mile carriers. In fact, the new DTC business model makes access and control of daily parcel capacity an urgent industry imperative.

The future of the supply chain is carrier diversity. However, utilizing different carriers can mean extra contracts and paperwork, higher costs and surprise fees. But what if the separate carrier entities could act as one national carrier with a platform that integrates several carriers, quickly adding carrier diversification and increasing capacity with one single contract? This simplicity is how transportation diversification can succeed – and it’s already happening.

AirTerra is an innovative parcel shipping company that solves ecommerce challenges in a unique way so retailers and brands of all sizes can compete on a level playing field. AirTerra is a single national parcel and postal carrier that has integrated Regional Carriers and the U.S. Postal Service, adding more to last-mile capacity. They were one of the first to market a point-to-point network built to handle the growth and transportation capacity, built for the DTC digital market.

With AirTerra, you get access to more capacity, greater flexibility, and benefit from simplified pricing, contracts, onboarding and carrier management, all without the additional cost required to manage multiple carriers. We provide Diversification Simplified.

It’s time to get in front of the parcel carriers that capping capacity and meet all the capacity, flexibility and transparency needs of the DTC supply chain.