Why You Should Work With a 3PL During the Holiday Season

Everyone does ample planning around the holiday season, and it’s not just individuals hosting festivities at their houses. The shipping industry is in high demand during the holiday season because everyone is ordering gifts that require delivery around the world.

Thus, companies may adopt new shipping strategies during these busy months; that’s where a 3PL can come in handy. While a 3PL broker is useful at any time of the year, this hectic season is a particularly important time when companies seek their help. Keep reading to learn more about why you should work with a 3PL during the holiday season.

3PL Services Explained

Shipping and distribution are branches of your company that can easily expand as you evolve your business. You may be able to keep everything in-house with a relatively small team at first, but eventual expansion requires access to more shipping resources to ensure the most efficient results. This is especially important when the holiday season comes around and product delivery is in demand across the globe.

A 3PL (third-party logistics) is a company that you can partner with to take over shipping and distribution. A 3PL may store freight in its warehouses while arranging transportation via air, sea, or land. Not only do they focus on the physical shipping process, but they also prioritize the logistics of order fulfillment.

Thus, a 3PL uses various software for tracking goods, monitoring invoices, and making shipping an overall better experience for you and the customers receiving each order. For example, our managed freight services at Translogistics include business intelligence dashboards, KPI reporting, and other analytics tools for managing the supply chain. This brings us to our first reason to hire a 3PL during the holidays—efficiency.

Efficiency Experts

3PLs are helmed by logistics experts with experience in the industry and the resources necessary to oversee successful shipping operations. Communicating with your 3PL ahead of time is paramount when planning for the holiday season. The more they know about your shipping needs at any given time, the more precisely they can alter their current operation to achieve your goals.

Plus, you can benefit from the productivity of a 3PL because their team should be properly experienced and trained for this work. This means you don’t have to hire and train a massive team for your shipping operation this holiday season. Instead, you can partner with experts who have that power at their fingertips.

A Diverse Range of Resources

To give you a better idea of the resources a 3PL can access, let’s dive deeper into the different modes of transportation. After all, saying that a 3PL is more efficient may sound nice, but how exactly do they achieve that productivity? A 3PL can help companies access trucks, planes, boats, and trains for moving freight internationally and domestically. In addition, these transportation solutions can be successfully structured in ways that accommodate the needs of the shipment.

For instance, LTL (less than truckload) is a shipping solution that simply means your shipment won’t fill an entire truckload. Thus, LTL involves one company sharing the truck space with other businesses. However, FTL (full truckload) shipping involves a company paying for the entire cargo space on a truck. Working with the right 3PL will make it easier to structure each shipment to best suit your needs during the holiday season.

No Local Storage Space Required

When it comes to the supply chain of any business, the actual movement of the freight is just one part of its journey. You also have to think about the storage space required to hold freight as it moves from point to point. Storage is especially critical during the holiday season because the volume of goods moving worldwide through any given mode of transportation is larger than normal.

Thus, you need proper storage in place to ensure everything in your cargo remains secure and ready to move when able. Instead of having to seek new warehouses for your business, a 3PL can handle the storage of your cargo, even as it concerns specialized items. For example, you may need to transport hazardous materials, fragile items, or perishable goods. Working with a 3PL means you can use their resources and knowledge to find the perfect storage solutions for standard and specialized shipments alike.

Better Delivery Times Mean Happier Customers

As you can see, the reasons why you should work with a 3PL during the holiday season primarily boil down to their ability to move freight productively. This is especially helpful during the busy holiday months at the end of the year because it enables you to accommodate the high volume of goods in transit and because these are all goods that will make customers happy.

A 3PL can help you adjust to the very busy holiday months, which is critical because these seasonal shipments are time-sensitive, given that the holidays happen on very specific dates. If you can get a customer’s cargo to them on time, then they will be very satisfied, whereas you will deal with frustrated people when their gifts arrive too late. Maintaining strong relationships with customers is critical throughout the year, and the holiday season can be the ultimate test. Luckily, working with a 3PL can help you maintain longtime customers and, hopefully, forge relationships with new shoppers, too.

Focusing Your Business Needs

Knowing when to outsource a certain task or service is essential because any business should avoid biting off more than it can chew. The supply chain can be problematic because of the high demand you may encounter during the holidays. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help that there are probably many other parts of your business you have to focus on, from marketing to product development and the many other specific services your company develops for customers.

By working with a 3PL to handle your supply chain, you can focus your efforts on the other branches of your company that need your attention, ensuring the whole company can keep functioning. Suffice it to say that business owners have a lot on their plates, and successfully lessening that load requires the help of specialized experts like a 3PL. Explore the 3PL partnerships you can make today to get a closer look at how you can start developing shipping solutions for the upcoming holiday season.