Shippers switch providers when a lane changes, a contract renews or a service fails. Outbound reaches the people who make that call with a specific lane, a specific capability and a specific reason to reply now, instead of waiting for the tender to land.
Hi Nadia,
The Reno distribution centre in last month's release should be shipping by spring, and from your store footprint most of it will run to Sacramento and the Bay Area.
We run dedicated dry van on Reno to Sacramento and Reno to Oakland five days a week for a beverage shipper of similar size, with drop trailers at the DC and the same drivers on the lane since it started. We would have room for another regular lane from March.
Would a short call before the carrier list for the site is set be useful?
[Your name]
Most carriers, brokers and 3PLs grow through load boards, a few anchor shippers and a sales rep working the phone. Load boards fill trucks at spot rates and never turn into contract freight. Anchor shippers run annual bids and rate the incumbent first. The people who award lanes, transportation managers and logistics directors at shippers, start their bid cycle months before the RFP, and the carriers they invite are the ones already in the conversation. Everyone else finds out when the tender is posted, if at all.
When a logistics company tries outbound itself, it is usually a capacity email: we have trucks, we run these lanes, here is our MC number. Shippers get dozens of those a week and answer none. Run properly, the email goes to the transportation manager at a shipper that has just announced a distribution centre, a new region or a service problem, names the lane out of that facility, states what you actually run on it and when capacity opens, and asks for a conversation before the carrier list is set.
Logistics buyers get a lot of generic capacity emails. Ours name the lane, the facility and the timing, because that's what a shipper actually needs to know to reply.
We build the list from facilities and lanes, not from company size. New distribution centre announcements, industrial lease filings, job posts for transportation and DC roles at a specific site, and public tenders tell us which shippers are changing their network. We take the transportation manager, logistics director or head of distribution at that facility, and exclude current customers and any shipper already in a bid with you.
Before writing, our copywriters look at the shipper's network: where the new facility is, what it ships and where, which lanes it creates, what the company has said about peak or growth, and whether news shows a service problem. They then check your lane data for what you actually run near that facility, so the email can name a lane, an equipment type and when capacity opens up.
Logistics emails fail when they are about capacity in general. Ours name the facility and the lane, state what you run there and when capacity opens, and describe one comparable shipper you serve on a similar lane without naming them. Under 120 words, no MC number, no carrier network size, no on-time percentage in the first email, and it closes with a short call before the routing guide is set.
We time sends to the bid calendar: most annual freight RFPs run from October to January, so the campaign is live by late summer, and expansion emails go out within two weeks of the facility announcement. We avoid peak season weeks and the week of Thanksgiving. Everything goes from dedicated domains warmed for three to four weeks, never from your company domain, and follow-ups stop the moment anyone replies.
Replies from transportation managers are usually a rate request on a specific lane, an invitation to the next bid or a note to check back before peak. They land in the portal sorted into interested, not now and out of office, and your sales lead should price the lane within a day. Every two weeks we review which lanes, facility types and triggers are replying and shift the list.
It names the facility, the lanes it will create and the season the shipper is working towards, so a transportation manager sees a carrier who already runs the lane rather than one looking for freight. The proof is a comparable shipper and a specific capacity date. It leaves out the MC number, fleet size and safety ratings, which come with the carrier packet.
It matters most outside the RFP, because the carriers invited to bid are the ones the transportation manager already knows. The email starts that conversation in the summer, so you are on the list when the tender goes out in the autumn. Mid-year, a new facility, a lane change or a service failure opens spot and dedicated lanes outside the bid, and we write to those moments too.
By never sending a capacity email. Our copywriters write to a specific facility and lane, describe what you actually cover there and how, and offer a comparable shipper you serve on a similar lane. No carrier counts, no 'asset-light network', no MC number. A logistics director can tell in one line whether the sender knows the lane, and that is the whole difference.
Yes, and we should. You give us the lanes, equipment types and regions where you have or can add capacity, and the list is built from shippers with facilities that feed those lanes. If capacity shifts, say a dedicated contract ends and frees trucks in the Southeast, we add that region in the next batch. Emails promising capacity you do not have get replies you cannot keep.