News / LTL specialist Roadrunner offers full refund for late shipments

Photo: Roadrunner

Roadrunner is chasing a bigger slice of the premium US LTL market with a full money-back guarantee for late shipments.

The asset-light LTL provider offers shippers a refund guarantee for day-specific shipments, for a fee that is 25% of the net freight rate, not including fuel and accessorial charges. The minimum threshold for the fee is $75.

Lori Blaney, SVP of sales, pitched Smart Guarantee as an alternative to airfreight and expedited ground services.

She said: “The new Roadrunner is focused on offering the highest level of service and being able to guarantee that service shows how confident we are.”

She said when shippers were short on time and can’t afford a delay, Roadrunner’s “direct metro-to-metro long-haul network” was an alternative to expensive expedited or air services.

The service is available in select lanes, and is being rolled out in the network, when clients book a shipment online. Roadrunner has terminals in 32 major markets across the US, according to its website.

The Smart Guarantee service is not available for oversize and non-palletised shipments and cannot be booked by Roadrunner’s interline partners or agents.

The new offering marks another step in the company’s push to shrink transit times, it said. Since a financial restructuring two years ago it has improved delivery times in more than 270 lanes in its long-haul LTL network. Earlier this year it unveiled a one-day service from southern California to Chicago.

“Our strategic improvements to our Smart Network build upon one another,” said CFO Jack Korslin. “After several years of investment in technology, automation, data analytics and personnel, we’re excited to put our money where our mouth is.”

Roadrunner’s on-time delivery rate currently stands at 93%.

Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting, said the offer of a full money-back guarantee had not happened in the LTL market since the late 1990s, when it was popular with shippers, but did not gain traction in the market, as the larger players stuck to their policy of refunding only the premium instead of the full price.

He doubts Roadrunner’s new initiative will trigger a landslide in LTL refund policies. The company is too small to have a serious impact on the major operators, he said, but LTL firms of a comparable size may have to reconsider their strategy.

And as Roadrunner’s offering is day-specific, it is unlikely to make ripples in the next-day segment, which accounts for 30%-40% of regional LTL shipments, added Mr Jindel. He sees it playing out mostly in the three-day segment, which makes up 20%-25% of the market.