How to Contain Your Trade Show Freight Shipping Costs

trade show freight

Whether you are a newbie or a trade show veteran, improving your trade show freight shipping can make your firm grow fast. Events and shows are still excellent sources of leads for many companies. The power of facial interactions with your potential customers improves conversion rates, leading to higher sales.

However, coordinating trade show freight services to transport your exhibit requires meticulous planning. The firm has to lay concrete plans to help ensure that different display components arrive at the venue of the show.

Businesses that participate in major shows rely on trade show freight shipping providers or third-party trade show logistics professionals to help get their products to their show. According to statistics, over 12 million trucks, locomotives, rail cars, and other vessels are moving goods across the transportation network.

In this article, you’ll get tips on how to improve the trade show freight shipping process.

1. Be in Control

Other than the trade show display booth, what are the other items to ship to and from the show? For instance, you can have premiums, product samples, and other gifts.

If you want to carry different things, consolidate them with your booth and send them via truckload shipping to the receiving warehouse. It will help you to save time and money.

2. Decide on LTL, Partial, or Dedicated Trucks

If your trade show booth requires a full dedicated truck, then you have less to worry about. However, what happens if your truckload is not full?

Ask your broker to give a quote for the service you want. In many cases, the truckload carriers will calculate the costs to pay depending on weight and dimensions.

The calculation for full truckload shipping rates depends on miles covered rather than weight or volume. This means you may find LTL freight rates to be more expensive than a full truckload rate.

3. Plan Ahead

When making plans, it is important to leave an allowance for your shipment arrival time. This helps ensure that your shipment arrives early and that your staff can set it up on straight time, not overtime.

Another thing to consider is shipping everything together. If not, you will need to pay separate charges for every delivery. This will increase your costs by a huge margin.

4. Opt for Shipping Cases

Do you want to ship expensive monitors, computers, electronics, or any other equipment that requires you to invest in shipping cases? A shipping case helps protect your shipment while in transit. With this, you don’t need to replace your equipment or worse yet, attend a show without it due to damages.

5. Weigh and Measure

Most freight companies tend to reweigh all shipments to determine the rates to charge. Therefore, be sure to weigh and measure each item on your trade show shipment. Write the dimension and weight on the outside of each box.

This information is important as it helps you to get accurate quotes allowing you to anticipate the costs to incur. It also helps prevent cases of overcharging.

Conclusion

Trade show freight and logistics play a crucial role in trade show management exercise. Yes, the process can be tough when starting. However, the good thing is you can make the process easier with time leading to a cost-effective solution. When you apply these cost-saving techniques, you will make the process more profitable for your firm.

What Can DTS Do For You?

Whether you're a company looking to improve one facet of your supply chain, your entire supply chain, or simply looking for a transportation and logistics consultation, we can help.

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