Issue #29: Ops Life in Freight

Operating freight isn't for everyone. I've done the job - I understand what goes into it. Let's dive deep on the topic.

I brokered freight for seventeen years. In that timeframe, I did almost every job that makes up a freight brokerage, from tracking loads and scheduling appointments to booking carriers and cold-calling shippers to sending invoices and issuing carriers quickpay. Hands down, one of the jobs that required the most brainpower and stress with the least amount of thanks was operating freight.

The role has a dozen different titles, whether you’re an operations representative, operations coordinator, load coordinator, scheduler, or “ops rep”, it’s a necessary job that doesn’t get enough love or attention. Let’s talk about what goes into doing this job.

Man, where do we start with this job? Is it getting yelled at by a customer because a truck (that you have ZERO control over) is late? Is it getting yelled at by a carrier rep because the delivery appointment sucks? Is it the twenty-five tabs you have open in your browser or the handful of sticky notes you have strewn about your desk? Maybe it’s that year-old sample of a product you have no intention of consuming that your customer sent to you as a “thanks” for all your hard work.

Operating freight is a necessary evil. It’s a core part of making freight move, and you can really love the job if you’re working with the right people. But for a lot of operators, it’s not a lovable role. It’s generally treated like less than most of the other roles in the company. People look at it as a stepping stone.

Operating freight means providing non-stop customer service to manufacturers or distributors (shippers) who pay you to move their freight. These shippers are paying logistics companies to make sure that their freight picks up and delivers on time, every single time. They want their freight delivered without damage and without anything missing. The potential risk of a load being late or missing some of the product could have severe consequences within a company’s supply chain.

I actually remember a time at Forager where we let something slip for a CPG customer. We allowed a refrigerated load coming out of Mexico to not get delayed on the way to the border, but also ended up dealing with the reefer unit failing and a full claim on the load while in Mexico. As a side note about this claim, just like I talked about in Issue #8, there’s no cargo insurance requirements in Mexico. So the customer not only had a claim they were responsible for, but they weren’t going to be receiving consumable products that they could distribute. I remember this customer telling me that we literally disrupted their supply chain.

This failure was heavily tied to how we managed things with the carrier. You know who got yelled at? The operations rep who was working on the account. You know who’s fault it was? Not hers. But she was the face of the company to this customer and so that’s who received the reaction.

Great freight operators take massive amounts of pride in the work that they do and they deserve to be proud. It’s a tough job and usually doesn’t pay as well as sales or leadership roles. There is potential for incredible career advancement if leadership has career-pathing mapped out. You get to experience the days where you save a customer’s day by executing on a critical time-sensitive shipment. But those days get drowned out by getting shredded by a customer for a late truck.

I get it – it’s not fair the way that freight ops people are treated, by people both internally and externally. I also don’t think it’s fair that most of the work an ops person does is data entry. It’s calling facilities and scheduling appointments that could be done through a better system. It’s copying and pasting information from one spreadsheet to another, or from a spreadsheet to a TMS, or vice versa. It’s sending 15-20 “please advise” follow-up emails when someone doesn’t respond the first three times you ask for an update. It’s getting paid the bare minimum to work 50 hours a week and have to answer emails after hours and on weekends.

Generally, your ideal ops rep is hyper organized and has great attention to detail. They are great with customers on the phone and can internalize stress and anger from customers to deliver a great service every time. My hope is that, with better technology, these great operations experts can actually focus on their expertise and become problem solvers and relationship managers, rather than doing data entry all day. I have a deep understanding of what it takes to operate freight, especially cross-border freight. At Cargado, we will build tools that will make these jobs easier for operators so that they can focus on maximizing their expertise, rather than spending all day in spreadsheets, email, and WhatsApp.