Month: December 2022

Drayage is the transportation of products in a container hauled by truck in the shipping and logistics industry. It is one major part of an overall larger journey for imported, exported, or railed container shipments, such as to and from a warehouse, coming from a vessel ship in an ocean port, and a rail intermodal terminal.

A drayage load can have different connotations. Therefore, there tends to be confusion among carriers on how to classify it. Some equate “drayage” with port shipments, which isn’t always the case. While all drayage loads tend to originate at a port of entry, there can be several legs of a drayage load (port, yard, warehouse, rail) before the container arrives at its final destination.

In the shipment process, drayage is a necessary trucking service that keeps everything moving towards its final inland destination from an ocean port or rail terminal sometimes known as an intermodal terminal.

Why is drayage important?

Drayage plays a vital role in transporting cargo. It creates a bridge for the final miles of import, export and shipments by rail. While drayage may seem like a small step of the process, it’s an integral part of the logistics industry and vital to the overall supply chain management process. In other words, using a drayage trucking company sets the tone for the entire journey from ship to shelf. Without a drayage trucking company movements of shipments from any terminals are nearly impossible.

 

Drayage Classifications

Inter-carrier Drayage involves the movement of goods short distances between different carriers. One example is the short hauls between trucks and the railway system.

Intra-carrier Drayage involves taking freight to two different locations owned by the same carrier. In this case, cargo can be transported from an intermodal hub to a rail station.

Door-to-door Drayage: Goods are delivered from the sender directly to the customer through roadways.

Pier Drayage: when a truck utilizes highways and roads to transport intermodal units to a dock or pier from a previous rail hub.

Expedited Drayage: Freight containers are transported quickly. This best applies to time-sensitive shipments.

Shuttle Drayage: when an intermodal unit is temporarily taken to a parking lot due to overcrowding at the origin hub. This happens for both empty and loaded units.

The Drayage Specialist Company is the first in its kind dedicated to supporting the drayage trucking industry by providing qualified and highly skilled remote team members to the industry. To find out which services we can offer you, get in touch.

• Do you find that distractions are constantly biting into your time?
• Are you always putting off managing expense reports because they’re too difficult to deal with?
• Does your family ask why they’re not seeing more of you, or you consistently plan your calendar that never get done?

If answered yes to any of these questions, then it’s time to get a Drayage Specialist. But then, what are the best tasks to outsource to a Drayage Specialist? What type of things can a Drayage Specialist do?

To be very honest, every business is different. How you perform your tasks is different from the way someone else does. Your business priorities cannot be the same as mine. These three tasks can help you decide on what type of Drayage Specialist you can get.

1. Tasks that are time consuming

It’s important to evaluate how much time you’re spending on certain tasks per week. This will help you see which of them are possible to outsource to a Drayage Specialist. You’ll free up your time to work on the business, not in the business.

Is it responding to emails, billing, paying drivers, entering orders, empty return locations, after hours support? These can take a lot of your personal time and a lot of time away from things you should be focusing on in your terminal. These are things that can be done by a Drayage Specialist.

2. Tasks that are easy to delegate

This could be making port and rail appointments, bookkeeping, scheduling pick-ups and deliveries. All these are easy to delegate, but time consuming.

3. Tasks you don’t know how to do

This is an obvious one. Many owners that own terminals spend a lot of time setting up social media recruiting, digitizing their terminals so the right owner operator or driver sees them and what they have to offer or creating social media content. It usually has to with technology, design or editing posts, ads or websites. All the stuff that you’re not really good at, or you don’t know how to do, can be outsourced to a Drayage Specialist.

These are the three possible types of tasks you should be delegating to your Drayage Specialist. So, why not outsource your team with Drayage specialist. We provide you with trained virtual Drayage Specialists who will help you free up time for other functions will grow your business.

Get in touch today to speak to a project manager. Let’s build a team of Drayage Specialists for your project. Click here to get started.

A lot of people don’t fully understand the meaning of Business Process Outsourcing, also known as a BPO. In fact, most companies are outsourcing something.
So, what does BPO stand for? What does it mean?

Business Process Outsourcing is a technical term used to describe a form of outsourcing where businesses delegate one or more of their business processes to another company. BPO can also be applied to the drayage trucking industry along with plenty of other Supply Chain links.

These processes, tasks or services can be back office or internal functions such as Billing, Order Creation, Recruiting, equipment Control and much, much more. They can also be front office functions such as customer support, sending out rate quotes, track and tracing.

Cost reduction is not the only reason businesses outsource. Here are 5 other benefits of BPO.

Advantages of our Company

1. Highly Skilled Labor

When you’re outsourcing, you can give a process or a tasks like one of our Virtual Drayage Specialist that has highly skilled resources, and are experts in their field. This way, you can get the best results from the tasks you assign to them. What’s more, they have years of experience catering to customers in specific fields.

2. Higher efficiency

BPO companies such as the Drayage Specialist have experience in the drayage trucking industry and much more. This makes them perform at the highest level, adopt best practices and know the importance of a shipments details. Therefore, they have greater productivity and are highly efficient.

You might also like: How To Build An Offshore Drayage Specialist Team

3. Focus on core business functions

Most businesses, especially terminals, find it difficult to handle secondary backend tasks. Using a BPO can help you transfer non-core processes like admin, giving you more time to focus on the main business activities.

4. Save on Infrastructure

When you outsource, you don’t have to set up a big office space and invest in it unnecessarily because the BPO company or already has their infrastructure created in multiple countries.

5. Global expansion

If your business decides to service an overseas market, some activities that require local market knowledge, national law expertise, or fluency in a foreign language can be assigned to a BPO company. This helps in boosting efficiency and quicker expansion.

To sum it all up, BPO involves contracting operations and business responsibilities to the third-party service providers. This usually happens to reduce costs, increase efficiency, increase flexibility, scalability and business continuity.So, whether you’re looking to reduce on backend overhead costs, improve service and vendor relations, or optimize processing, there are a number of ways the Drayage Specialist company can help you. Drayage Specialist is a business staff outsourcing company starting with a heavily neglected industry in trucking, Drayage.

Get in touch today to speak to a project manager. Let’s build a team of Drayage Specialists for your project. Click here to get started.

Working with an offshore Drayage Specialist team has become a common practice for many businesses in the industry. You can train your in-house team to handle any position you need them to handle, but it is both costly and time consuming. In fact, it’s even harder and overwhelming if you’re a startup.

My name is Guillermo Mayol – the CEO of The Drayage Specialist. When I owned my terminal, I started outsourcing back in 2014 and that is when I started growing my business and I had my local office focus on the important things like selling, recruiting and dispatching. I’ve been growing my outsourcing company for the Drayage industry from my office in Orlando, Florida, and we have become the leading provider of qualified and highly skilled remote team members to the Drayage Trucking Industry. I often get asked how I’ve managed to grow my virtual teams. Well, whether it’s a small or big team, we use the same four-phase process to build teams for our clients.

Phase 1: Planning

The first phase of the process is planning. We meet with you via a virtual call to assess what your needs are. We specifically look at the repetitive and crucial tasks that take up most of your local teams time. These are the tasks that are easier to take off your shoulders or your team and delegate to your Drayage specialist. We also discuss how many Drayage Specialists you need, which hours you want them to work, as well as a setup plan, whether they will need to have an internal email and a phone extension with your company’s phone system and much more.

You might also like: BPO and Its Advantages in The Drayage Trucking Industry

Phase 2: Recruitment

Once your requirements are spelled out, we go to the next phase of the process, which is recruitment. We recruit all of our teams from the ground-up according to the Drayage Industry’s needs. We go through our database of Drayage specialist already on the team to select the right specialist for your terminal. We always vet all of our applicants and present ourselves with a shortlist of team members that I know will meet your needs. Hence creating a team fully trained prior to you hiring them. Therefore, we process the recruitment and allow you to manage your staff.

Phase 3: Training

Once we’ve found the ideal Drayage Specialist, we move on to the next phase which is training. We’ve created a training campus that is dedicated to the success of our Drayage Specialist. Your Drayage Specialist will have both an understanding of the industry along with real life work experience.

Phase 4: Management

The fourth phase is management which is ongoing for us to be able to manage your requests and your experience with your Drayage Specialist. We have our Drayage Experience Specialist, which makes sure your terminal and your Drayage Specialist are properly collaborating. Our Drayage Experience Specialists take the initiative to deliver a wide range of services that guide any terminal through their entire on boarding process and ongoing experience.

Their role goes beyond the traditional team lead role where they take ownership of your experience in the main areas of the supply chain mindset. They are empowered to move beyond their problem-solving experience and do what needs to be done. Whether processing operational needs, addressing requests, completing reports, delivering quality solutions, or sharing the highlights of the local area, the Drayage Experience Specialist makes solutions feel like part of your local office.

Working with an offshore team is easy. We will gladly help build a strong communication infrastructure and treat your offshore team as part of your terminal. With the four distinct, tried and tested phases outlined, you will not have a problem growing your team of Drayage Specialists with us.

Get in touch today to speak to a project manager. Let’s build a team of Drayage Specialists for your project. Click here to get started.

Scheduling, planning, and tracking your shipments can be a fairly complex process. You can certainly do it all yourself for a while, but eventually you’ll need someone to help you. In fact, even the most successful entrepreneurs reach out for help every now and then. This isn’t only essential for business growth and success, but is necessary for a work-life balance. So, how do you know when it’s time for you to get help?

Let’s start by doing a simple thought experiment:
Would your life change if you hired a Drayage Specialist for a few hours a day? Would adding three more hours in the day help you do some of the work you’ve been putting off for a while? If yes, what kind of daily tasks do you feel can be handled by someone else?

Are you able to get away from your business and still have it run at maximum efficiency? If not, then there’s a good chance you’re too tied in and need to start delegating. You shouldn’t be resisting the idea of adding a team member as a risky endeavor. Consider it a natural progression that will help you in the long run.

Five key indicators that you need a Drayage Specialist

You don’t have to be overwhelmed by maintaining contact with your customers and drivers, while also trying to manage company operations. Yes, you are in this situation, but there is a solution. You can get help. You don’t have to let it lead to burnout. If you’re watching this, you probably identify with some of the key indicators I’m about to outline.

1. Spending more time on administrative tasks than the core business

It’s ok to do it all when you’re a start-up. In fact, administrative tasks can’t be left undone, otherwise, your business won’t function efficiently. However, the details of these tasks will eventually wear on you. So, if you find that making port and rail appointments, bookkeeping, scheduling pick-ups and deliveries, data entry, and team management is taking up too much of your time, it’s a surefire indicator that you need a Drayage Specialist.

2. Your business needs skills you don’t have

When you spend too much time learning skills that your business needs, you won’t have enough time to focus on the high-impact, high-value activities that you as a business leader should be tackling. And, even if you’re multi-talented, there comes a time when your business outgrows those talents. For instance, marketing strategies need to be constantly revised or changed to keep up with the changing landscape. However, when you’re doing everything yourself, you won’t have time to analyze the data that fuels business strategies. This is where a Drayage Specialist comes in. They don’t have to only perform tasks you’d rather not do, but should bring specific expertise to the tasks you’re not up to date with.

3. Your business is holding you hostage

If you keep finding yourself working 7 days a week, or getting home after 7:00 p.m. every single day, even when you can be home by 5:00 p.m., then you need to call in reinforcements. Your work-life balance is out of whack and you need another pair of hands. A Drayage Specialist can take on much of the work that’s been keeping you busy, allowing you to generate a to-do list that you don’t have to personally cross off. You also might just be able to take some off, and go on that long-awaited holiday.

4. You’re ready to scale, but holding back

You could be holding back on growing your team because you’re not uncertain of the commitment of time, effort, and money it will take to bring them on. Regrettably, the idea of hiring new people is a major hurdle for many business owners. The thought of payroll, taxes, benefits, and the recruitment process – vetting, interviewing, reviewing, training, onboarding could be restraining you. What if you don’t have to go through all of these HR hurdles?

This is where a Drayage Specialist comes in. They simply fill your need without needing the major responsibility of a new hire. For example, hiring a Virtual Drayage Specialist can help your business save in annual operating costs. This is because they work on a part-time, freelance, or hourly basis, making the hiring process very simple. Fully trained Drayage Specialist have the expertise in a wide array of business functions such as customer service, recruiting owner operators/drivers, web development, billing and paying drivers, updating dispatch boards, responding to empty return requests, and 24/7 support. This makes it easy to hire an assistant who has specific skills, without going through the daunting recruitment process.

Best of all: You can put your Drayage Specialist on a short probation and not feel bad if you decide to let them go after that. This can’t easily be done for fulltime hires.

5. Your business has transformed

As your business starts to grow beyond what you can handle, it becomes more complex and you need to delegate, whether you like it or not. You may have started with intermodal drayage services, but now offer expedited and inter-carrier drayage services. Travel increases and responsibilities are expanding.

Your business has gotten too big for you to manage alone. You don’t find time to check on your old clients like you used to. You could still be productive, but you’re not hitting targets like you used to. You’re getting more complaints than praises, and your admin is stacking up. You are not the problem! Your business has transformed.

Your business is growing, and that’s great. It’s a sign that you’re headed in the right direction. The most important thing is to remember that there are Drayage Specialists who are readily available to relieve you of some of your tasks. What’s more, they can function like permanent members of your team. This doesn’t mean business growth is directly related to hiring a Drayage Specialist. No! It means the demand on your time and energy has increased. Thus, a Drayage Specialist can step in for some of your most essential tasks.

Let’s build a team of Drayage Specialists for your project. Click here to get in touch with a project manager

It’s easy to outsource to the Philippines with the Drayage Specialist company – an American outsourcing company based in Orlando Florida.

Real Quick, who are we, who am I? I use to run a terminal at the port of New York for almost 20 years. I struggled with growth and wearing multiple hats just to get by. I struggled to understand how other terminals managed to keep the organization moving forward. Until I found a solution to the problem without running out of money. I started hiring my own team members full time for my own operation and saw my office thrive I did so. I was also able to focus on growing the business instead of being a fire fighter and putting fires out all the time. Don’t get me wrong it came with the same hiring challenges I had here, but twice as hard because the person wasn’t here next time. But after a few months everything started to come together.

So, I decided to create a Business Process Outsourcing company that would train my team in the Drayage industry, so we would be able to assist those terminals in need with fully trained Drayage Specialist that can meet their needs without the huge costs. We’ve grown our company to more than 100 team members and scaling across the globe. We offer customer service support, billing, back-end support and after hours support for the trucking and supply chain industry.

Having a virtual support team will be revolutionary for your business. In addition to obvious cost savings, improved customer experience and efficiency, having a remote team will maintain business continuity even in the event of a pandemic or natural disasters. It won’t take too long to build your own team of Drayage Specialists with our office. We guarantee it. So, what are you waiting for? Grow your terminal while a Drayage Specialist manages the tasks that can help you grow. Click here to get started.

When running or managing a terminal, I’m sure you agree that there are so many things that you need to focus on. You’ve got driver recruiting, sales, billing, customer support, track and tracing just to mention a few. It’s not surprising that the idea of customer service is something that you only think about every now and then.

However, if you want to create an outstanding business, you have to start to see customer service as the epicenter of your terminal. This is because those same customers bring the revenue that keep the wheels on your fleet turning.

But, how do you strike a balance between focusing on your customers and running all of your other moving parts? By outsourcing your customer service and support functions, that’s how.

If your business has a need for around the clock customer service care, then you need to take full advantage of outsourcing a team of Drayage Specialists. Those who outsource customer service to a Drayage Specialist are able to build their customer support team and focus on growth.

Here’s one major example of how hiring three Drayage Specialist can benefit your business

If you need to manage customer requests or provide driver support 24/7, then you can have one agent working an 8-hour block. The second agent takes over from that agent for the next 8 hours, while the third agent works the last 8-hour block. This way, you can have a team member present 24hrs a day.

If you have 3 agents working around the clock, you’ll be able to create great levels of rapport which is the basis of all successful relationships.

You’ll be remembered by your clients, leading to a 5 star rating and a major part of any supply chain link. You’ll also be able to make better decisions because you’ll be able to give your customers what they need, especially now that things are running as fast as Amazon does 24 hours 7 days a week.

What’s more, you’ll be able to focus on making your operation better and looking for profitable business.

It’s clear. Outstanding customer service is greatly rewarding. So, why not outsource your customer service team with a Drayage specialist. You will be able to strike a balance between focusing on your customers and running your operation. We’ll provide you with trained virtual Drayage Specialists working in different time zones, making it possible for you to provide 24/7 customer care and so much more.

Click here to get in touch with a project manager.

When you first started working in the Drayage Trucking Industry, little did you know you’d spend your days juggling business obligations with administrative tasks. Not an ideal state of affairs. And when your business is still young, spreading its wings in a fiercely competitive market, you just don’t have enough hours in the day to also handle billing and driver payments.

You then find yourself wishing that you had an extra pair of hands. Well, you’re not alone. Even though most businesses prefer to have their billing done inhouse, managing these processes can be time consuming. Here are 7 reasons to outsource billing and driver payment services.

1. Save loads of time

Billing and paying drivers can take a lot of your time. It can distract you from the things that you should be doing on a daily basis. Imagine if you used those extra hours exploring new business opportunities, recruiting Owner Operators, drivers or doing what you are really good at … Outsourcing can help you manage multiple tasks within a limited amount of time, while others perform tasks that need to be regularly done.

2. Bring highly skilled workers on your team

Your job can become easier if you have experts who can handle your billing and driver payroll. However, finding highly skilled workers can be challenging. When you hire a Drayage Assistant, you don’t have to bother about the geographical restrictions. This is because you have free access to world-class talent from anywhere in the world, fully educated and detailed oriented.

Are you ready to outsource your billing and driver payment services? Click here to get started. If you’re still not convinced, read on…

3. Save a ship load of cash

Save more than 70% on wages and benefits paid to in-house employees by outsourcing. Better options become available at comparatively lower costs when you outsource. You can also save expenses for office space, maintenance costs and additional taxes.

4. Shift focus to more important tasks

While experts focus on billing and paying your drivers, you can focus on valuable business processes that can grow your business. There are two things that should be focusing on when considering outsourcing – things you can’t do yourself and things you shouldn’t be doing yourself.

5. Bring additional resources

Outsourcing billing and driver payment services gives you access to the best tools which help decrease uncertainty and inconsistencies. This includes the accuracy of someone focused on billing accurately, matching the proper back up documents to bill without disputes, chasing for the right documents and making sure the drivers are being paid on time.

6. Effective Continuity

Outsourcing can help internal staff grow professionally and collect new knowledge that are important to the local market. Like, driver retention, dispatching, sales and best of all Growth.

7. Become more flexible

Outsourcing gives you the flexibility to reduce or expand the size of your team at the blink of an eye. Hiring a Drayage Specialist allows you to scale operations because they have the efficiency to handle the additional volume of work. The flexible nature of a Drayage Specialist will allow you to manage business variables without difficulty at a lower cost. Furthermore, because Drayage Specialists don’t follow inflexible work schedules, you can allocate work hours that are beneficial to your business.

At Drayage Specialist, we go beyond billing and paying drivers. We provide critical oversight and account management to ensure many of your processes are running smoothly. Let’s build a team of Drayage Specialists for your project. Click here to get started.