Control costs. increase efficiencies. improve customer service. enhance business performance.
Your business is unique, and so are your transportation needs. Whether you currently own and operate a private truck fleet or utilize common carriers to ship your products, we want to help you understand the benefits of using a Dedicated Contract Carriage (DCC) provider to solve your ground transportation needs.
What is Dedicated Contract Carriage?
Dedicated Contract Carriage (DCC) is a transportation service where a DCC provider, like TQ Logistics, dedicates specific vehicles and drivers to a single customer for their exclusive use, often on a long-term contractual basis. This approach provides shippers with dedicated capacity, predictable costs, and a high level of service control, similar to owning their own fleet, but without the overhead of fleet management.
It is a customized transportation system that manages your drivers and trucks and acts as an extension of your business (without any of the downsides of owning your own fleet, such as capital resources stuck in depreciating equipment assets, liability, DOT compliance, HR headaches, etc.).
At TQ Logistics, DCC is our primary focus.
Benefits of Dedicated Contract Carriage
Control
Gain more control over the fleet operations with dedicated vehicles and drivers exclusive to your company. Additionally, DCC offers better cost predictability and potentially lower long-term costs through efficiency gains.
Exclusivity
Dedicated Contract Carriage provides a dedicated fleet exclusively for one client versus sharing resources with other fleets.
Customization
DCC often includes tailored services, such as branded vehicles and specialized equipment, to meet the client's unique needs.
Is Dedicated Contract Carriage right for you?
Understanding whether DCC is right for your operation depends on how you’re shipping now. But regardless of your current operating model, we want to help you determine if a DCC model is right for you.
There are three main ways that you may be shipping your goods:
- Private fleet – you currently own or lease a private fleet
- Dedicated trucking service – you already have a contract with a DCC provider
- Carriers – you hire carriers to ship your products
Regardless of how you ship your goods, if you can answer “yes” to any of the questions below, our DCC model may be right for you.
You own
a private fleet
You currently run a private fleet and can't imagine outsourcing that portion of your business.
- Are your insurance premiums skyrocketing?
- Is your administration burdened with managing compliance and HR activities?
- Are the regulatory requirements taking your team away from doing more valuable work like serving your customers?
- Are you struggling to hire drivers?
You already use a dedicated trucking service
If you currently use dedicated trucking services and like the DCC solution, but are considering whether your partner is right for you.
- Are you dissatisfied with the responsiveness of your current provider?
- Is there room for improvement in the level of service you provide to your team, partners, and customers?
- Is your current contract coming up for renewal?
You hire carriers to ship your products
Maybe you're a manufacturer and you don’t fit into the other two categories, but think it might work for certain aspects of your supply chain.
- Are you experiencing issues or delays moving shipments by a
common carrier? - Do you have regular shipments within a 150-mile radius?
- Is there a regularity of shipments on a weekly basis?
Choosing the right DCC provider
When it comes to choosing a provider, you need to consider their experience and longevity in the industry, their coverage area, strong safety record, on-time delivery performance, a reputation for exceptional customer service, and a straightforward pricing structure.
Another factor involved in choosing the right DCC provider is to provide prospective DCC providers with information about your shipments so they can model your data as accurately as possible. To do this you need to identify and assess your existing structure to get an in-depth look at direct and indirect costs associated with your operation, such as:
• Equipment Costs
• Material-Handling Equipment
• Road Expenses
• Driver Costs
• Insurance
• Management Costs
After your assessment is complete, follow these 4 simple steps to ensure prospective DCC providers have what they need to provide you with the most accurate, tailored solution:
STEP 1
Select a period of normal shipment activity to model and describe any surge or potential volume increases.
STEP 2
Gather “good” data that identifies your outbound and inbound shipment activity for the selected period to allow the DCC providers to model “what if” scenarios.
STEP 3
Provide the DCC provider with the data and any business rules that should serve as constraints in modeling a solution (i.e., acceptable delivery windows, material-handling requirements, specialized equipment, etc.).
STEP 4
Make sure all the prospective DCC providers have adequate time to model your data.