What to Ask Before Hiring a Heavy Haulage Transport for Long-Term Contracts
When you need to use heavy haulage transport for one or two items, you may have different questions than you would with long-term needs. If you are trying to find a heavy haulage transport for long-term contract needs, then you want to make sure they can meet your specific needs and requirements. Here are three things that you need to ask before hiring a heavy haulage transport for your long-term needs and what to know about each question.
Safety Guidelines and Checks
There are many heavy haulage transport companies that offer safety checks for regular loads. However, what may be a suitable safety check for one small load or short distance heavy haul, may not be what you need for long-term haulage needs. For example, you may be considering how your liability insurance is affected by the way the haulage company handles the safety of your hauls.
You may also be considering coverage for the client's items or your companies items that are being hauled should the transport company overlook something or not have safety features that are up to par. Make sure to ask about the guidelines they mandate their transports follow and the safety checks their drivers must go through for each haul.
Scheduling Management
Something that can really affect your transports is a shipping delay. If there is a shipping delay that is not properly handled, you could be facing losing a client or paying fines to other companies for deliveries not arriving on time. This may not be as important if you are dealing with transport companies for one or two shipments.
If you are dealing with heavy haulage transport companies for long-term shipping and transport, scheduling management can make a large impact on your business overall. Make sure you ask how the company handles delays if they allow time for delays in their estimated delivery times, and how they handle transport issues that could affect scheduling like trucks breaking down.
Administrative Assistance
Some companies may handle only the transport of the heavy haulage items. This means they load the items, transport them, delivery them, and repeat the same actions for each transport you have. In these cases, you must handle all the administrative tasks like bills of lading. There are some companies that will handle administrative tasks regarding the shipments for you. This may actually save you money and reduce confusion regarding shipments and transports. Ask what tasks they handle regarding administrative assistance before hiring.
By asking these three main questions, you will be able to narrow down your heavy haulage transport choices to the companies that will work best for you. Once you have your answers, you will be able to further narrow down your choices based on pricing, haulage times, and other related topics and issues.