Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash

Hello all!

Steve here, wishing you a great start to 2018!

And it really does seem like it's going to be a good year – not least for those of us who do courier work. There are a lot of exciting and useful innovations coming through the pipeline and for my money most (if not all) of them are worth getting excited about. Perhaps the ones worth getting most excited about are the Transport Management Systems, or TMS.

TMS: the Way of the Future

Now, I know some of you have just started smiling and nodding your heads, while the rest of you are probably sat there scratching your heads, wondering what on Earth a TMS is. Well, it may sound like some sort of medical condition, but it actually refers to a system – either cloud-based or app based – that helps regulate the freight process to make sure it is as quick and cost-effective as possible. In short, it's a system that finds solutions so you don’t have to! And who wouldn't want that?

Cost Effective Solutions

Now, I probably don't need to explain how or why this can benefit companies and individuals who do courier work, do I? Regardless of the size of your company, this is the type of thing everyone could probably do with, if only to make sure their business runs that little bit smoother.

And the best part? They’re not even that expensive and you won’t have to sell an arm or a leg to get one of these systems. In fact, some of them, like Kuebix, are entirely free, and work just as well as the paid alternatives. Others, like URoute and Freightview, make you pay for their services, but have the advantage of being aimed specifically at small and medium sized businesses - which most courier companies are.

Whichever option you opt for, however, the point stands: they are not at all expensive for the amount of work they can help you with, and are definitely worth looking into if you run a courier company or do courier work independently on a self-employed basis. I've already signed up for one of them (I'm not telling you which, as I don’t want to influence you) and have definitely noticed a difference over the past month or so. Don’t take my word for it, though – sign up for a TMS and see for yourself.

Until then, though, drive safe and drive well.

Steve