Bringing Lanes with Inconsistent Volume Under Contract 

Headquartered in the USA, Stanley Black & Decker provides the tools and innovative solutions you can trust to get the job done – and have since 1843. But like many other shippers, current market conditions have made it more difficult than ever to move product efficiently. 

The Challenge

For Black & Decker the challenge was finding reliable coverage for lanes with inconsistent volume -- PTA was a constant concern.

With low volume lanes “it’s very tough to get consistency from a contract rate perspective. We’ll lock in a rate and as long as they’re seeing freight, we might get 3 months at the agreed upon price. But the arrangement will typically fall apart” says Matt Jolles, Manager of North American Truckload.

The transportation team runs operationally lean making booking efficiency critical. While planners have a set routing guide, there’s limited bandwidth to spend waiting for carrier responses or finding coverage on the spot market. Re-pricing bids also places a strain on resources.

The Solution

Black & Decker started with Reliable Contracts on their most troublesome outbound CA lanes. Instead of having a static rate, they used a dynamic rate that included a 100% PTA Guarantee, incentivized margins, and rate transparency.

Using Reliable Contracts, "we can ride the market down, whereas if we had a contracted rate, we’re not actively capturing the benefit of riding that wave down. Given the arrangement, there’s plenty of motivation for Loadsmart to buy well, because they can get better margins for the performance.”

As the market softened throughout 2022, they’ve taken advantage of the floating rate to drive over $100K in cost savings, all without having to re-bid. Since the start of the program, Black & Decker has expanded to 5 new locations and tripled the load volume moved through a Reliable Contract.