Freight buying – More Art than Science?

One might initially think that freight buying is relatively straightforward process. However, when you look into it closer, its more art than science required to buy freight at optimum price, every time. Large companies in India depend on their experienced logistic managers to buy freight and there is not much of science involved. The logistics managers in-turn depend on their experience and their transporter network to get the best rates for the day.  Indian Transportation industry is an unorganized sector, and this also makes freight buying more difficult and unpredictable.  

Data science to the rescue.

Technology advancements in the area of Data science and machine learning can help to make freight buying more predictive, reliable and consistent. 

Techno logistics companies like Caliper Business Solutions had leveraged machine learning & data science techniques and made freight buying predictive, reliable and consistent.

Caliper’s team of Data scientists and logisticians studied the freight buying pattern of a large FMCG manufacturer and arrived at a daily predictive buying rate. The ML algorithm predicts the freight rate at a lane wise (Bangalore to Chennai), Vehicle capacity wise (9 MT, 16 MT). Some of the factors considered are Fuel rates, seasons (off-season, regular season, peak season), regional holidays (Diwali, Durga pooja, Pongal, etc). 

With this predicted Freight rate, the FMCG manufacturer has a good reference point to validate against the actual buy rates and they are also using this to set this as the selling price. They are already seeing huge benefits with the predicted price and brought transparency to the system. Freight buying for them is no more an art, its science – Data science. 

If you are interested to know more on how to buy Freight using Science than art, reach out to us at info@caliperbusiness.com or call us at 8767227722. We would be happy to help you solve the freight buying paradox.