Seasonal Dock Congestion: Proactive Solutions to Keep Freight Moving

For many companies, now is the busiest time for shipping. The final push to get products out the door and off to regional distribution centers and customers before the holidays is here.

As a result, there is plenty of seasonal stress on logistics operations to go around. For one, trucks can get harder to find. The marketplace is flooded with freight that needs to be moved, so carriers can be more selective with the loads they take. And you can be sure they’ll be most interested in the loads that pay the best.

(We’ve got some tips for finding capacity when the market gets tight in this post: Is Your Logistics Team Ready for the Holidays?)

Finding carriers is not the only part of logistics that has gotten more difficult. As demand and shipping activity spikes, docks get busier and more congested, too. The impact can be significant as the efficiency of docks tends to go down, and extra costs (such as detention) start to appear. In the rush to keep pallets moving out the door, attention to detail can start to slide as well. This can lead to misrouted shipments or orders being picked inaccurately at a time when no company has time to deal with those types of mistakes.

Does Your Dock Feel the Same Stress Every Year?

The negative impact on shipping costs and the service your customers receive can be severe when a dock’s operations are not managed well enough.

Companies that struggle with seasonal shipping peaks tend to feel it in a few costly ways that appear every year, including:

Higher Labor Costs: During peak times, it becomes harder to properly manage and allocate labor resources. When freight volumes fluctuate day-to-day or week-to-week, it’s common for a shipping operation to find itself under or over-staffed. Knowing how to staff up is almost impossible when the amount of work to be done changes quickly.

Try measuring some key metrics to better understand how well your labor resources are being utilized. These include—‘time spent per appointment’ and ‘monthly overtime hours.’

Dock Congestion: When freight is not moving quickly enough, pallets can back up on the dock. Or, worse yet, force companies to begin filling any possible empty space with finished products until they can ship. In severe cases, this can even include having to pay for external storage space. Congestion can happen due to poor production planning, poor shipment coordination, or carriers being late.

Poor Supply Chain Visibility: An inability to see the status of loads, where pallets are located, and when trucks are showing up has obvious implications for a shipping dock. When production, the shipping department, and carrier partners are not aligned, the problems expand during peak times.

Congestion and visibility are closely related. Some key metrics to track that can help identify problems are ‘changes to the number of loads shipped per month,’ ‘on-time pickup percentage,’ and ‘average detention time.’

There is a common thread with all three problems—they all lead to higher costs, are a drag on the efficiency of your dock, and will likely impact service to your customers.

Downstream, late deliveries are inevitable when trucks are loaded late and can’t make deadlines. It’s a double-whammy—paying for detention because you loaded a truck late and which is then delivered late to a customer, which is bad for many obvious reasons.

Now, Focus on Solutions

We just listed many of the problems that come about regularly during peak shipping season. What does a shipping dock look like that overcomes them? Here are some simple but clear signs.

• The dock knows what carriers are coming in and when. There is no guessing about what loads are picking up next or surprise detention costs.
  
  
• All the shipper’s functional areas (from production to sales to shipping) have visibility that includes a shared view of what is shipping and when. It keeps everyone informed and on the same page.
  
  
• The amount of labor resources is always on the mark, with costs remaining on or under budget with no drop in dock throughput.
  
  
• Dwell time is minimal, and accessorials like detention decrease or are eliminated.
• Delivery performance is excellent, thanks to smooth coordination with carriers. Which, of course, keeps your customers happy.
  
  
• Logistics operations are far less impacted by the unexpected because changes can be made and communicated quickly. It’s easier to overcome weather, congestion, and more frequent facility closures that can make delivery harder and less reliable.
  
  
• The overall performance of your supply chain improves as lead times shrink, even as the need for faster deliveries within tighter windows increases.

Why Opendock Is the Solution for Peak Season Headaches

Not surprisingly, data and technology are a big part of managing through any peak shipping period. Up to this point, we’ve talked about the impact of an inefficient shipping operation but very little about the tactical work of coordinating and scheduling trucks.

Time studies show that scheduling a single dock appointment can take upwards of 15 minutes between all the carrier calls and emails. When annualized, that can equate to thousands of hours spent solely on scheduling for even a medium-sized dock. By digitizing the scheduling process, Opendock empowers companies in several ways, including saving time spent on phone calls and emails, more efficiently allocating labor to more value-added tasks, and creating a consistent, reliable experience for your partners.

Dock scheduling software is the technology that can create the company-wide visibility companies need and help get the work done day-to-day while maintaining efficiency. Our open API allows shippers to connect Opendock to their TMS, WMS, or ERP systems, consolidating data, enabling automated workflows, and making it easier to track important metrics like the ones we’ve listed above.

More hard savings from Opendock significantly lower the expenses associated with detention fees by reducing wait times and eliminating unnecessary or miss-billed charges.

Ready to try Opendock to make this your smoothest peak season yet? Request a demo here.