Technology has continually made shipping goods more convenient, efficient, and reliable. From a single person sending a small-package gift to a friend cross-country to a major corporation scheduling hundreds of truckloads in a day, many shipping operations can be successfully carried out with just a few simple keystrokes. This has led to expansion and profit growth throughout the industry, but our tendency to rely on simplification can often lead to large problems down the road. Even with lightning-fast software and increasingly impressive AI making transportation more automated, we have to be sure to double check all of our work to guarantee accuracy during every step of any given shipment.
Because computers have become so central to the booking process for many transportation companies, the information in a shipment may pass through several systems and be relayed to multiple warehouses before a second human even takes a look at it. While these computers are highly capable of providing this information to each other, they cannot make up for any errors that were made during the initial data entry phase of the shipment. This means that the human operator at the beginning needs to make sure to double and triple check every line of data to prevent catastrophic problems down the line. Shipping and receiving addresses may seem rudimentary, but a single mistyped digit in the zip code could throw the entire shipment off. Failing to provide the correct PO number or dock door could lead to driver detention at the shipper, costing money for the customer and carrier. All of these could be prevented by simple accuracy checks and SOPs that ensure all workers are paying close attention to their data.
At Zip Xpress, we understand the importance of accuracy in the logistics world. We know that time invested at the beginning of any process will most certainly save time in the long run, as backtracking to fix a problem requires far more work than preventing the error in the first place. It is inevitable to encounter mistakes in any industry, but our detail-oriented, hard-working philosophy allows us to minimize the number of simple mistakes, thus reducing the negative effect of larger problems down the road. To see our accuracy with your shipment, start today at Zip Xpress!
