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Freight Controller was founded in 2012 and is part of a group of companies operating in the Australian transport market for over 40 years.
While operating as a third-party carrier with truck and driver services in the Melbourne metropolitan area, we pioneered a Freight Forwarding model in the late 1980s. We started implementing independent, multi-carrier Freight Management Systems into our clients’ warehouses over 16 years ago. From this knowledge and experience, the idea for Freight Controller was born, founded by our second-generation Managing Director, David Beach.
We give control to you. You can use our TMS system on a PAYG basis or use a turnkey solution that includes the reconciliation of invoices, the management of freight enquiries and negotiation, identifying and implementing the right mix of carriers for your needs, as well as account management of your carriers. You can also choose or a combination of services and software systems in between.
As we are a partner, not a middleman broker, you can, if you wish, maintain a direct relationship with the carriers. Our fees, therefore, are transparent and based on shared savings. We are independent of carriers, meaning you can potentially access 100% of the carriers that meet your requirements within your freight profile when we negotiate a review for you, rather than being limited to a dozen carriers that a broker can offer that might not be a great fit.
Our complimentary, no-obligation, preliminary freight reviews are assessed on a case-by-case basis. They typically apply to companies that ship standard packages (mostly pallets or cartons) as a guide. To assist with the initial assessment, we usually need 3+ months of your historic freight data to help with the initial assessment. Onsite visits are also helpful, as well as photos of your packaged freight.
Carriers are selected based on what the data shows us. We profile and benchmark your freight and use analytical tools and logistics experts to assess gaps in the profile.
We are an independent Freight Consultancy. This means a limited range of carriers doesn’t hamper our negotiations. Because the rates are yours (not ours with a margin placed on top), you have transparency on your costs and can maintain a direct relationship with the carrier. Your invoice comes directly from them.
We ask you to sign a Letter of Authority to conduct a Freight Review on your behalf. Effectively, we become your outsourced Logistics Consultant for the duration of the review. This satisfies any carriers we approach on your behalf that we are authorised to negotiate with them on your behalf.
We may provide them with an RFP document including profiling data to assist with their analysis for rate card creation. This does not include any pricing information. Once we have their response, we run it through our in-house systems to analyse potential options for optimising your freight from a service and cost perspective, and we share the results with you in a consultation meeting.
Every customer is unique. However, savings from a Freight Review are typically between 5 – 30%. Although the inverse is not always true, it is more common to get a lower percentage for higher spend customers. Our pricing model is transparent and based on a shared savings model, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by using our predictive modelling method with guaranteed outcomes.
We offer Transport Management Systems (TMS ) and an Ecom Platform to assist with automating your dispatch. Our systems are ‘on premise’, SaaS, Thin Client, or cloud-based. You can use a basic model or have a modified version integrated with your Ecommerce, WMS, ERP or Accounting System.
Our Freight Technology includes:
It depends on what model is provided as per your freight requirements. We do not charge the carriers for the data download, who might forward that charge back to you. For those using our turnkey freight management solutions, the software is typically provided for free.
Remember that the system smarts help reduce your freight costs, and the efficiencies gained in your operations will further save you time and, therefore, money. Payback is usually very swift, and we can help you calculate that upon consultation.
Carrier Check is our in-house back of office system that assists us (and our customers) to optimise their freight. There are three modules to Carrier Check:
Invoice Reconciliation connects to the customer’s warehouse-based FMS (or TMS). This can be provided by another software vendor or by us. We can then import manifest data from the system to verify the carriers’ invoices. We can also import carrier supplied software platforms used by your warehouse operators to automate your dispatch.
Freight Enquiry is our outsourced management of your Freight Enquiries: bookings, ETDs, PODs, lost freight, etc. Our customer service team manage our bespoke system designed to handle all queries efficiently.
Delivery Status imports DIFOT / POD data for analysis of your carriers’ performance. Customers have access to real-time interactive Dashboards to monitor freight cost and activity, enquiry data, and DIFOT / POD data. The insights gained via these Dashboards help with a continuous improvement methodology and optimise your freight spend. Carrier Check can be used as a standalone or part of a turnkey freight management solution.
At Freight Controller, we check for commonly found errors on your carrier invoices, we also look at Operational Logistics issues to overcome the recurring problems, so we aim to improve your processes and the carrier’s processes to zero errors. This means we are not constantly fixing the same errors over and over again.
The system also alerts you to any sudden changes before they build up, and your company has paid tens of thousands of dollars that you didn’t need to. Just like insurance, it’s worth it when something goes wrong.
The data goes into our Freight Cost and Activity Dashboard, from which we often find further actionable outcomes that can reduce your costs by an additional 5-30%. Our Delivery Status Dashboard helps determine the best carrier for servicing your freight via analysis of cost and service together. There’s no point in having the cheapest rates if the carrier has a high rate of delivery error issues. This combination can further reduce your costs.
Our Freight Enquiry system saves you time and resources for managing this aspect of your customer service tasks internally, and the Freight Enquiry Dashboard provides more data analytics on the number of issues by a carrier to help guide your distribution management.
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