Whether big or small, specialized or general, retailers have the distinction of being closer to the consumer than any other type of business.
In many ways, this is a blessing; after all, it means retail businesses can see the positive impact they have most directly, as customers have their needs met right before their eyes. But proximity to the consumer also comes with its unique set of challenges. When customers place special orders, retailers are the ones who have to take them, and it’s their job to find and coordinate a supply chain that can meet those orders. When products become unavailable, then no matter what part of the production and distribution process went wrong, it is retailers who have to explain to customers why they can’t find what they’re looking for. In short, retailers have to be the public face of every logistical problem.
With this in mind, it’s no wonder why retailers work so hard to make sure their underlying supply chains are solid.
Businesses in this industry search far and wide for good suppliers, making sure the carriers they work with are tried and true. But no matter how effective a frontline carrier is, sooner or later, they are going to have a mishap. It’s in those situations that access to emergency freight services is a life-or-death matter for a retail business.
AirFreight.com is committed to keeping your retail company not just alive, but thriving.
We’re expert coordinators of expedited freight, and can direct the emergency carriers you need to get out of any logistical jam. Our resources span both the sky and the ground; whether you have to transport something across the continent or “just” over a few hundred miles, we’ll be able to get the job done in less than a day. No matter what conditions you're facing, you can count on AirFreight.com to complete your delivery and keep your store in the red!
Serving Small Storefronts
Despite the famous success of big box and online retailers, many of the most successful retail businesses remain small stores. Local shops can count on a dedicated customer base, having shown their communities that they know their needs well and will cater to them carefully. But to keep up that reputation, small retailers have to be willing to jump at the first opportunity to help their customers, no matter what unique challenges that opportunity presents. This means that when a customer comes in calling for a specialized order, the store has to do everything it takes to fulfill that order, no matter how rare the item or its constituent parts.
Airline Network
As our name implies, AirFreight.com specializes in coordinating air deliveries. Regardless of what part of the continent your items or supplies come from, we can get them to you in a matter of hours. We’re able to do this because we have painstakingly weaved together a web of cargo airplane partners throughout North America. From Mexico to Canada to all of these United States, our airline affiliates span the continent, giving us the freedom to fly in products or inputs from any location. No matter where your store gets its wares, you can count on us to fly them to you in a matter of hours.
Truck Connections
AirFreight.com supplements its massive airline network with a chain of trucks that is every bit as massive. We form partnerships with drivers of all types, from sprinter van operators to those trained to operate eighteen wheelers to truckers with experience in every other variety of vehicle. Having so many truckers in our network gives us the capacity to quickly pick up your items the moment you place an order and then deliver them immediately to the airport. It also makes it easy to coordinate deliveries over a small enough difference that they can be done entirely by truck. If your items only have to travel a few hundred miles, there’s no need for them to ever leave the truck bed until they’re dropped off. Either way, AirFreight.com will make sure they’re taken care of every step of the journey.
Special Services
In addition to our ordinary expedited delivery options, AirFreight.com offers a number of services tailored to getting you out of even the most difficult shipping jams. Chief among these is our air charter service, which is when we set up a new flight entirely for your items; this has the benefit of letting you ship items at hours of the night when scheduled flights aren’t operating. We provide similarly specialized trucking services, and notably assign our affiliated drivers in teams of two so that they can keep their vehicles on the road night and day without growing too tired to do the job safely. These and other solutions ensure that however remote your supply points, however inconvenient the hour, and however large or small the order, you’ll always be able to count on a timely delivery.
Meeting Customers' Unique Needs
AirFreight.com is committed to getting to know our small retail clients on the most detailed level. We study your unique needs, your community, and the history of your business so that we’ll be able to anticipate your shipping challenges before they even arise and will have a plan in place to deal with them. With AirFreight.com on your side, you’re sure to get the best expedited delivery solutions for your specific business.
Planning in the Alternative
When we say that AirFreight.com plans all our deliveries carefully, we don’t just mean that we find a route that has short distances, a high speed limit, and few opportunities for delay. We instead find multiple such routes, considering all the roads, connecting flights, and other paths your items might take along the way from your starting point to your destination. While we select the most promising of these possibilities for your order, we keep the other ones in mind as your items are on their way. Then, if a traffic jam, flight cancellation, or other issue should arise that makes a promising route look distinctly less promising, we’ll know the next-best route to switch your items to and can make the change immediately.
Tracking & Reacting
AirFreight.com works with its airline and trucking partners to make sure the most advanced monitoring equipment is available for every vehicle in our network. Such equipment then allows us to know the exact location of the truck or flight carrying your order at any given time. We’re able to triangulate this data with reports on weather, traffic, airfield maintenance, and a host of other factors that affect the speed of your delivery. The moment that some obstacle or event comes up that threatens to delay your delivery, we’ll know. We can then take decisive action, steering your truck around the obstacle or switching your cargo to a new connecting flight.
Centralized Command & Control
While all our plans and tracking data are highly valuable, they won’t do a bit of good unless they’re properly filtered in real time. It’s for this reason that AirFreight.com has centralized our coordination efforts. A team of emergency freight experts is available at all times to review your order, find the best routes, find trucks and planes to deliver along those routes, and track those trucks and planes from start to finish. By leveraging our data and resources in real time, our centralized team keeps your order on schedule.
Constant Contact
Through these efforts, AirFreight.com keeps shipping issues localized and resolves them quickly, so your company doesn’t have to devote other resources and risk throwing off the entire supply chain. To learn more about all that we do to help retailers, large and small, visit AirFreight.com today or give us a call at (800) 713-1000.
