APL Logistics rolls out ShipMax Alliance, a collaborative logistics service offering

APL Logistics recently announced it has rolled out a new service offering that it said is designed to save shippers money and time through the optimization and management of high-frequency truck deliveries across complex supply chains.

Entitled the ShipMax Alliance, APL officials said that this offering will help shippers in the sectors APL serves-retail, consumer goods, automotive, and light industrials-to make good on their goal of collaborating – and to finally transform collaborative talk into collaborative action.

Some of the ways in which it will work to do this include: seamlessly pairing freight loads from compatible partners to common destinations; managing a steady stream of smaller deliveries to customers from multiple origins to common destination pairs without incurring additional costs; saving time and money by automating processes to streamline routes, customize cargo combinations and optimize delivery schedules; requiring minimal training and low integration expenses to speed implementation; and tracking metrics through detailed carrier performance reports and dashboards.

APL said ShipMax Alliance will initially launch in the Americas and will be rolled out to other regions beginning in 2016. The company has been planning and developing the ShipMax Alliance for about two years.

“The idea for it arose from the many discussions we’ve had with our clients, particularly those in the consumer goods industry,” a company spokesperson said in an interview. “Many of them were looking for new solutions that would help them address ongoing challenges like driver shortages, truck capacity issues, heightened customer service expectations and trying to spread and deliver their inventory across retailers’ multiple channels.  And they saw collaborative shipping arrangements as one of the best potential answers. After years of hearing shippers say how much they really wanted to find the right kinds of shipping partners, how open they were to the possibility of collaborating – and how hampered they often were due to various constraints such as other supply chain initiatives, limited IT budgets, internal concerns or just by figuring out how to locate companies that were a good collaborative fit – we decided it was time to find a way to make it happen for them.” 

While the concept of collaborative shipping has been around for quite a while, the spokesperson said that until ShipMax Alliance, no one had really been able to successfully marry it with the technology or the concept needed. And she added that the biggest general benefit is that ShipMax Alliance should actually allow companies to make good on their goal of collaborating – and to finally transform collaborative talk into collaborative action.

The biggest specific benefits cited by the spokesperson include:
-Reduced LTL costs.  Collaborative partners that routinely and strategically co-load their shipments will be able to create bigger and better-optimized truckload shipments;
-Improved customer service. By shipping to the same destinations together instead of separately, collaborative partners will be able to provide their customers with more supply chain conveniences – such as a steady stream of smaller, more frequent deliveries – without having to charge these customers more;
-Greater sustainability.  Because they’re combining portions of their carbon footprints, collaborative partners will be able to reduce transportation redundancy and other aspects of supply chain waste;
-Lower infrastructure expenses.  Collaborative partners often enjoy the economic benefits of sharing various line items such as DC, labor, equipment and systems;
-Greater innovation.  In the world of process improvement, two heads really are better than one.  Collaboration provides the ideal forum for sharing best practices, engaging in open communication and higher-quality problem-solving;
-Increased customer retention.  In a competitive landscape where price and service alone are not enough to guarantee customer loyalty, collaborative supply chains may be the key to finding the kinds of new efficiencies, savings and performance improvements that customers are demanding; and
-Fewer empty miles.  By engaging in collaborative relationships with players further up the supply chain, companies may be able to eliminate some of the transportation inefficiencies associated with empty backhauls.

“Like many 3PL products, ShipMax Alliance is also another example of a service companies don’t have to perform themselves,” the spokesperson explained. “It essentially gives shippers/customers access to co-mingled and fully optimized trucking without requiring them to do any of the footwork or administration.  Just as important, it provides all of the players with a neutral third-party integrator to ensure that everyone derives the value from these better optimized, more efficient shipping configurations that they deserve.”

When asked to provide a basic example of how the ShipMax Alliance works, the spokesperson presented this scenario: Consumer product company A, consumer product company B, and consumer product company C are all located in the Atlanta suburb of Lithia Springs, and they all deliver to the same three major retailers’ nearby distribution centers.  Without ShipMax, they’d all take responsibility for making multiple daily deliveries to each of those DCs independently– even though this often means that they have to send out multiple trucks that are only partially loaded.   With ShipMax, these consumer products companies can let APL Logistics – which has the visibility to see that they all have good supply chain complementarity—take all of their required delivery parameters into account and build larger, more efficient shipments that combine all of their goods as appropriate, often using full or closer-to-full truckloads.  The retailers still get their DC deliveries.  And the three companies still get their deliveries made; however they do so without using as much fuel, or incurring as much expense or generating as many empty miles.

The spokesperson added that this same model could also be applied to auto parts manufacturers that are shipping to the same vehicle assembly lines or industrial parts manufacturers that ship to factories.