When operating a route between a source and destination, there are scenarios when the truck may carry consignments earmarked for locations that fall between the two. For such drop-off points, transporters prefer to negotiate for and maintain separate contract rates that factor in these ‘Via Routes’. With our recent update, Pando now allows Shippers to configure and maintain these Via Routes inside the rate matrix for any given lane. A new column 'Via' has been introduced where the rates for routing a indent through a particular drop-off point can be captured.
To understand this better, let’s consider an example—a contract for transport from San Francisco to Los Angeles. If there are multiple drop-off points between the two cities, say at Sacramento, Fresno, and Bakersfield, then Pando allows you to capture the contract with prices for routes via the multiple drop-off points instead of creating and maintaining separate contracts between these points.
How would this help a shipper?
With ‘Via Routes’, a shipper now has the option to combine multiple indents into a single truck if the said truck is traversing over the ‘Via’ point on its way to the final destination.
Let’s say there are shipments from SF to Fresno, Sacramento and LA. Without ‘Via Route’, three separate indents would be created to each of the destinations. With ‘Via Route’, a single indent would be created that would combine all three shipments and ensure that all three shipments are loaded in the same truck. This helps effective utilization of the truck and get better costs.
In the aforementioned example, Pando would choose contract No.5 which has via routes in Merced, Bakersfield, and Fresno as it allows the same truck to cover all 3 indents and drop it off in each of the points.
With ‘Via Route’, shippers now have at their disposal an effective tool that allows them to club together multiple indents and achieve better utilization of their truck’s capacity.