Before joining the team at FreightorGator I worked several years at a very large 3rd party logistics broker. My experience there led me to FreightorGator; and joining the cause to advance the industry forward. LTL can be a tricky beast, even in the best circumstances, and cutting my teeth at a brokerage proved invaluable.
Jay, the LTL Expert
So now that I’m here at FreightorGator what differences have I seen and faced working for a small tech company versus a large, multinational brokerage? What is it about FreightorGator that drew me away from a solid corporate job?
FreightorGator represents a new way of doing business for the massive LTL freight industry. As our founder once said, “FreightorGator isn’t disrupting the 3PL space, we’re enhancing it.” Technology is playing a larger role in logistics, and while the incumbents certainly have the resources to spend on the cutting edge (our friends at XPO have $400 million+- per year technology budget) they can also be very slow to move and adapt to current market trends. That’s where a small, agile, flexible company like FreightorGator can shine.
Perhaps the best reason I could find for leaving the cushy corporate life for the exciting/anxious startup world was the emphasis on helping the small business customer succeed. No matter how you slice it, 3PLs thrive on the high-volume shipper and find the small guys to be a nuisance; requiring a much higher margin per load (30%+) to do business with companies shipping less than 8-10 times per month. At the end of the day, companies like Echo Global Logistics, CH Robinson, Coyote Logistics, and others are fat cats out looking for the bigger fish. FreightorGator is a small business; that understands the importance of saving time and money. Therein lies our daily drive to simplify the LTL freight process, extend our negotiated partners rates, and advance this industry forward.
It’s not their fault, really. 3PLs have huge sales teams that know where their bread is buttered. It just makes more sense for them to cultivate those large contracts from seasoned shippers. These accounts bring in the big bucks and require less hand-holding. A phone call or email from a small, local shipper just trying to get out their occasional LTL order would usually result in a frustrated sigh, followed by a high margin requirement to do business. Think about it… If you are an account manager with a multi-million-dollar book of business, and a transactional customer calls you up, how excited are you to jump on that business? You’ve got your hands full with complex truckload pickups, and large LTL shippers that feed your commission check!
The way these small volume shippers were dealt with was simple: The large 3PL would drive up the margin as high as they could so that it would be worth their time if that less frequent customer decided to move forward. If the small customer didn’t like the price, no sweat, the 3PL can turn their attention back to the big dogs. Either way, a win for the 3PL and their sales teams.
The wonderful thing about FreightorGator is that our technology scales for every customer, and our transparent business model (including a flat booking fee) resonates for customers of all shapes and sizes. For shippers that are focused on maximizing efficiencies, FreightorGator may be a refreshing alternative to the “middleman game” described above. Check us out (www.freightorgator.com) the next time you have a pallet or two on the dock. You may end up as excited as I was to leave the antiquated world of the 3PL behind.
