NASSTRAC honors top LTL carriers

The shippers' group recognizes outstanding performance with its Carrier of the Year awards.

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 5/1/1998

The less-than-truckload industry has undergone substantial change in the last 12 years. Many carriers, some of them large, have gone out of business. The survivors have weathered labor strife, hard economic times, and changing customer demands.

It's the ability to meet these changing demands that wins customer loyalty. With unyielding pressure on shippers to reduce cycle times, curb inventory, improve the quality and quantity of information available, reduce claims, and provide reliable on-time delivery, the true test of a carrier remains similar to what it has always been: Can it deliver shipments on time and intact? With the aforementioned pressures on shippers, though, measures of on time have narrowed and the level of acceptable claims has dropped close to zero.

To honor less-than-truckload carriers that meet those changing demands day in and day out, the National Small Shipments Traffic Conference, known as NASSTRAC, each year presents Carrier of the Year awards to trucking companies selected by its members as the best in the business. The awards are presented in three categories: national carrier, multiregional carrier, and regional carrier.

The Carrier of the Year program, which is intended to recognize outstanding performance among LTL carriers and to encourage carriers to strive for service excellence, is co-sponsored by NASSTRAC and Logistics magazine. The 1998 awards were presented to executives of the winning carriers by Peter Bradley, chief editor of Logistics, at the NASSTRAC spring conference in Naples, Fla., last month.

This year's list of winners contained some familiar names. For the 10th time in the 12 years that the award has existed, the shipper members of NASSTRAC selected Roadway Express as the top national LTL carrier. The shippers gave top honors in the four-year-old multiregional category to American Freightways, the third time it has been chosen in that category. Viking Freight, which returned to its Western roots last year after an unsuccessful effort to build a national network, was named regional carrier of the year, an award it last received in 1993.

The Selection Process

NASSTRAC members judge carriers on several criteria in order to determine winners in each of the three categories. Those include innovation and industry leadership, use of technology, service performance, loss-and-damage claims record, and performance of administrative functions such as rating and billing. Carriers are allowed to nominate themselves for the award.

Nominated carriers are asked to measure themselves against the judging criteria and explain how they go about meeting their customers' needs. The nominations then are forwarded to the award screening committee, which selects a group of no more than five finalists in each category. At that juncture, NASSTRAC members get their chance, rating the finalists on the same judging criteria.

The award itself has changed with the industry. In 1987, the program's first year, an award was offered in only one category. The next year, NASSTRAC made awards in two categories, one for national and one for regional carriers. The multiregional category was added in 1995.

Editor's note: The process of selecting the 1999 NASSTRAC/Logistics Magazine Carriers of the Year already is under way. Winners will be announced at next year's spring NASSTRAC conference in Florida. For more information, call NASSTRAC at (202) 393-5505.