At TIACA’s Air Cargo Forum in Miami, senior shippers sent a clear message to forwarders: those that prove dependable in a crisis can win more business afterwards, even if they are not the cheapest option on the table.
Executives from Veralto, Lockheed Martin and GE Vernova said that how a logistics provider performs when capacity tightens, routes are disrupted or a shipment becomes urgent can shape future tender decisions. The discussion suggested that in a market where disru...
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ptions are increasingly common, resilience and responsiveness can matter as much as rates.
Mitch Marx, director of transportation and logistics at Veralto, described how one forwarder earned a stronger position after helping the company through a squeeze on China outbound capacity. While other providers pushed through surcharges, he said one partner sought to preserve the agreed rates on the volumes it had already won, while reserving the right to charge more only on extra cargo. That approach, he indicated, left a lasting impression when the next annual negotiation arrived.
“They got really creative, and so for the next year, the next negotiation, we placed an emphasis on moving as much of our volume to that freight forwarder as we could,” he said.
The same theme emerged from GE Vernova, where logistics sourcing executives said a forwarder can earn additional work across the year if it does more than simply respond to the annual bidding cycle. Spot shipments and project cargo, they suggested, may come the way of providers that show flexibility and commercial imagination when supply chains come under strain.
But the company also made clear that many forwarders still fall short when disruption hits. During tensions in the Middle East, discussions too often revolved around price escalation rather than practical alternatives, the representative said. “It turned into how much are you willing to pay?” she said. “We’re really looking to find partners that are more willing to think outside that box.”
Mark Chadwick, president of the Global Shippers Association, said loyalty does not remove the need for competition, but equally, the lowest price alone does not guarantee success. He argued that past performance and the overall quality of the relationship still influence award decisions, even when they do not show up neatly in a procurement model.
The panel also pointed to a more specialist concern: whether the market has enough providers capable of handling tightly regulated defence cargo. Lucas Martin, global logistics lead at Lockheed Martin, said there appears to be ample capacity for standard freight, but he questioned whether enough forwarders have the regulatory expertise needed for more difficult work as production ramps up.
“When it gets to the stuff that’s really hard to move, and there’s only a certain number of people that can move it, I think we’ll see some challenges when we get to full-ramp production,” he said.
He added that failures usually stemmed from either weak product knowledge or poor communication, underlining the importance of industry experience in complex programmes.
The discussion then turned to technology, an area where several shippers said their expectations were rising even as their patience appeared to be thinning. Marx said forwarders had once promoted digital tools heavily, but that messaging now seemed less prominent as providers focused on operational basics. GE Vernova’s representative said even getting a simple Excel download of cargo in transit could still be unexpectedly difficult, despite the fact that such information had once been easy to obtain.
She also said there was often a gap between the confidence shown by senior sales teams and the responsiveness of control towers and operations teams when a shipment needed immediate attention. “The level of urgency isn’t there. The level of detail isn’t there,” she said.
Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, warned against technology proposals that would require access to purchasing systems or supplier information it would not share. “That’s always going to be a hard pass for us,” Mr Martin said. “It seems to be the technology is getting a little more intrusive.”
For Veralto, the key lesson was that service improvement does not always mean faster transit. In some cases, predictability matters more than speed, particularly for replenishing consumables into distribution networks. Mr Marx said a shipment taking eight days instead of five could still be acceptable if the timing was consistent and the business could plan around it.
That preference is also influencing modal choices. Higher airfreight costs have pushed the company to shift suitable cargo to ocean transport, although working capital pressures, inventory rotation and expiry dates limit how far that can go. Where neither air nor ocean alone offers the right balance, sea-air can provide a compromise.
The broader implication for forwarders is that operational understanding may now be as commercially important as pricing. Shippers want providers that can navigate disruption, protect their supply chains and suggest workable alternatives rather than simply quoting a rate. In a market shaped by volatility, the ability to solve problems may be the factor that determines who gets the next shipment.
Source: Noah Wire Services
