A full-service transportation management system (TMS) can solve shippers' visibility pain points, says JP Wiggins, vice president and co-founder of 3Gtms.

Wiggins talks up freight consolidation because cost saving happens there for both manufacturers and shippers. Consolidation projects really should come back, he says. “Talk to your customers, get them to buy in truckload quantities, that's the easy one. But then also talk to them about early delivery. Suppose you have a shipment on Thursday, and you have a shipment on Tuesday. Can I deliver them both to you on Wednesday?”

A modern transportation management system can help there, he says. It can aid in identifying customers’ hours of operations and what type of freight they handle. “That’s important, because if one could turn partial shipments into LTL or LTL into truckload, maybe multi-stop truck or pool distribution or even full truckload, the benefits to everyone in the entire supply chain is just exponential the more you're able to consolidate.”

In addition to cost reduction, Wiggins notes, there is considerable benefit to the environment through consolidation. He says reducing deadhead miles can eliminate 200 billion pounds of carbon in America alone each year. “Like consolidation, deadhead miles are something that can be optimized for,” Wiggins says. “This is something a TMS can help with, because your trucks either come home or they end up in locations that you can get freight out of to help reduce carbon.”

A TMS implementation doesn’t have to be a massive, years-long project. “You still can do the big bangs, but people now have different pain points. So I would say look at what your pain point is, and solve that specific issue. Put in a slice of a TMS to solve for that.” On average, companies save 8% to 10% on overall freight spend with a modern TMS, Wiggins says.