• Get all the benefits a 3PL / Broker offers while maintaining direct control of your carrier relationships and pricing programs.
• True Transparency – Some 3PLs will claim to provide transparency in their fee structure; however, most will not share with the customer copies of the actual pricing established with the carriers. With PML’s program, PML is transparent with the fee structure as well as maintaining the carrier pricing agreements direct with the customer and carrier. This eliminates any hidden compensation other 3PLs may be receiving in the form of rebates from the carrier(s).
• Customer Allegiance: PML’s allegiance is only to the customer where 3PLs and Brokers have an allegiance to both the carrier(s) and the customer. Other 3PLs and Brokers claim to put a customized program in place, they may also offset one customer’s freight with another to appease the carrier(s) or looking to win / provide awards to the carriers.

PML is the ONLY provider that handles a customer’s negotiation process with TRUE transparency. Like the parcel negotiations; PML works behind the scenes to understand all areas of a customer’s shipping profile in order to evaluate the current program and carriers. PML complete a benchmarking analysis to determine where a customer’s program aligns compared to market.

Benchmarking: PML evaluates all aspect of a customer’s shipping – carrier usage, base rate, discount, FAK, fuel surcharge, accessorial and many other pertinent metrics.

Request for Proposal: Upon completion of the benchmarking and metric study; PML develops a Request For Proposal (RFP) to send not only to current carriers but alternate carriers that may be a fit for the customer. PML conducts this RFP as an extension of the customer’s logistics / shipping department.

Evaluation: PML evaluates all aspects of the proposals submitted by each carrier to determine what an optimized program would look like according to the initial submissions. Based on this optimization study and discussions with the customer PML will develop correspondence with a small subset of carriers from the original bid to enhance their proposals and become program carriers.

Implementation: The carriers mutually selected as program carriers will be requested to publish pricing in tariff or contract format. This publication remains solely in the name of the customer. PML reviews the final publication for accuracy and loads into the TMS for customer use.

PML will work as an extension of a customer’s staff. When a truckload is required, PML will solicit rates and capacity from the customer’s specific contacts; regardless if the contacts are asset based carriers or non-asset brokers.

In addition to the customer’s contacts; from time to time PML will introduce additional providers into the quoting process. All quotes and equipment availability will be provided back to the customer to make the final decision on which provider to select.

LTL Management – Myth: Because a 3PL / Broker manages are larger book of business, the 3PL / Broker receives preferential pricing in the LTL market.

• True transparency – PML will work to establish rates customized to the individual customer. The pricing established with the carriers is owned by the customer NOT PML.
• Customized programs are specific to the individual customer’s shipping characteristics including but not limited to carrier choices, rate base, discounts, fuel surcharge, accessorials.
• Customer input / involvement is maintained and encouraged throughout the entire process
• PML develops a customized RFP(s) and launches to the carriers specific to the individual customer. PML then collects the bids, runs modeling scenarios and reviews the results with the customer to determine which carriers to proceed to a 2nd round of negotiations.
• Once carriers are selected, PML works to publish the pricing directly between the customer and carrier(s).
• Rates for all carriers are loaded in PML’s TMS to allow customers to make shipping decisions based on cost and / or service.

PML’s audit system employs both an electronic and manual audit process. Carriers with the ability to submit invoicing via EDI are set up to electronically submit their bills. The bills then run through PML’s audit system to match against a load created in the system and / or rate against a profile built to the customer’s specific pricing program.

• Reduce administrative expenses if you are processing and paying the carriers yourself.
  • On average it costs a company in direct labor costs in excess of $5.00 / freight bill to process and pay the carrier.
  • Eliminate your AP department cutting multiple checks to multiple providers by cutting 1 check each week and allowing us to issue individual payments to your carriers.
• All freight bills are checked for errors including but not limited to: Rate Amount, Discount Amount, Net Amount, Fuel Surcharge, Accessorial validation, Classification, Duplicate Billings, etc.
• Data capture every element presented on a freight bill from the carrier in order to provide online reporting for visibility into your freight costs.
• Multi-Modal audit capabilities – LTL, TL, Parcel, International, Courier, Expedite, etc.
• GL Coding – customized GL coding based on the individual customer requirements by any criteria including by direction, location, carrier, product, etc.
• Contract Loading – all contracted rates are loaded in the audit & payment portal in order to accurately audit against the invoices submitted by the carrier whether via EDI or other electronic means or paper invoicing.

Any shipment that does not match within an acceptable variance are put into a queue to be manually audited for accuracy. If a shipment is incorrectly billed by the carrier a reduction is made to pay the carrier the appropriate amount.
The processing of the invoices entails capturing all data that is contained on a hard copy freight bill. Once passing the audit process, if applicable, the shipments are G/L coded based on the customer’s individual requirements. Upon completion, all bills are invoiced at a shipment level detail to the customer each week.

The customer has 2 funding options:

1. Based on summary reports provided at time of invoice, the customer can issue the final payments directly to the carriers. This option allows the customer to maintain 100% control of all cash flow, payment verification, etc.
2. The customer can elect to have PML fund payment to the carriers. With this option, PML will NOT release any payment to carriers until the weekly consolidated invoice is funded in full. Depending on the funding method from the customer, the payment is placed on hold for up to 48 hours to ensure the funds are in PML’s account. Once this is complete, the shipments go into a queue to be issued on the next available check run.

PML provides an online reporting portal allowing customers access to dynamic reporting on all their invoiced shipping data. These reports provide both a high level summary as well as shipment level detail for customers to understand their complete shipping program.

PML’s reporting software has the capability for customers to extract the information in various formats such as Excel, Word, PDF, HTML, and Plain Text.

All PML reports can be reviewed by mode to show Key Performance Indicators, cost breakdown and allocation; account summaries to determine a variety of metrics: average weight / shipment; average cost / lb; vendor / customer summaries and many more.

With our audit portal capturing all shipment level data; in addition to the standard reports PML has the capability of providing customized reports based on an individual customer’s request.

• Various canned strategic, weekly and monthly reports providing insight to all pertinent shipping metrics based on both invoiced and booked shipments.
• Ability to create custom reports based on the individual need of a customer
• Strategic reports show a high-level visualization of a customer’s transportation program.
• Query builder allows a customer to build a one time use or recurring report based on the individual needs. The query builder can be built on any field(s) that are available in the system.