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One of the most common complaints our LTL Account Executives hear is that our competitors repeatedly send them invoices for shipments that are double the amount of their original LTL freight quotes. When we start doing deeper research into their invoices through our free cost analysis we often find that our competitors are using the old bait and switch to get them to accept a LTL rate that is unbelievably low, only to come back after the shipment has been delivered and add on reclass fees to the final invoice.
It’s unfortunately one of the many shady tactics other logistics companies will use to gain your company’s business. BlueGrace has a zero tolerance for this practice, and we’ve developed technology and tools to help you prevent these unexpected fees. Our experts have put together a brief lesson below on the freight class system used by most LTL carriers and how using this system will help you avoid reclass fees when quoting and booking LTL freight shipments.
The Freight Class System
Almost all LTL freight carriers use the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) system to design their pricing structures for transporting LTL freight shipments. There are a total of 18 NMFC freight classes ranging from class 50, up to class 500. Shipments classed at class 50 would be the least expensive to ship, while shipments at class 500 would be the most expensive. This is where other logistics companies will try and take advantage of you. They’ll often give you a rate for a shipment at a lower freight class than the actual class of your shipment to give you the impression they’ve giving you a good rate, but once your shipment is in transit and gets inspected by a carrier you’ll receive an invoice after delivery with additional fees resulting from the reclass and inspection of your shipment.
Reclass fees can have a huge impact on your company’s profitability.
Does your company charge your customers for shipping based off your LTL quotes? Imagine that you’ve broken even on shipping a product to a customer, on the sale of the item you’re making $50, but you’ve just received a freight invoice that is $100 over the original LTL freight quote you were provided by your logistics company. You can’t go back to your customer and ruin that relationship so you have to absorb the cost of that reclass fee, now instead of making $50, you’ve lost $50.
To avoid this we recommend determining the freight class of your shipments yourself and utilizing our BlueGrace Freight Class Density Calculator to make the job easier. While some items such as automobile engines and flooring might have standard freight classes that don’t change, there’s thousands of other commodities that have their freight classes determined by the density of the shipment.
BlueGrace Freight Class Density Calculator
In the below screenshot you can see for yourself how simple using this system is to obtain your own freight classes! Using our Freight Class Density Calculator you would simply type in the dimensions of the pallet (length x width x height) and input the total weight to have our system provide you with an accurate freight class.
You would then take this freight class and input this into our Blueship system to obtain quotes, book your shipment and retrieve your BOL all on your own and within just a few minutes without having to put your faith and company’s profitability in the hands of another logistics’s company Account Executive. Not only will this save you time on quoting and booking shipments, but it’ll give you extra peace of mind knowing that you aren’t being taken advantage of.
If you’re ever in doubt about the correct freight class for a shipment don’t hesitate to reach out to our BlueGrace Team directly at 800.MY.SHIPPING or fill out the form below.
