Procuring logistics services is not the same as buying paper clips

© Khunaspix Dreamstime.

Quite – the title of this article could almost have been a quote from a previous Loadstar story. The examples of shippers demanding greater value and lower costs from their freight service providers are legion and increasingly unsettling, because if anything it looks disturbingly like a race to the bottom has been inaugurated by the very parties who continually claim they don’t want their suppliers engaged in a race to the bottom. “There is no incentive for 3PLs to be innovative and creative if your objective is to beat them down on cost, shift all the risk to them, and then put the business out to bid again in one-to-three years.”