Yelp review

Are Yelp Reviews Important? Here’s What Every Business Owner Should Know

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If you’ve gone to a new restaurant, picked a hotel, or hired a plumber lately, the odds are good you stopped by Yelp before making a final decision. Yelp reviews give buyers a sense of security and can help businesses get their name out there, but reviews aren’t foolproof. Anyone can leave a Yelp review, and one disgruntled customer in a bad mood can ruin a business’s reputation. So is it still worth it to list your business on Yelp?

The stats behind Yelp reviews are telling.

While concerns about unfair reviews are understandable, avoiding Yelp entirely is tough. 91% of people read reviews before choosing where to take their business. Yelp also has over 178 million visitors on a monthly basis. If you’re not on Yelp in 2022, you’re practically invisible to the majority of your potential clients or customers. 

Visibility, however, isn’t the only factor that matters. Stars matter, too. The vast majority of consumers, 82% to be exact, avoid visiting businesses with an average rating of less than 4-stars. If you only have a handful of reviews, just one bad review can bring down your rating. Even if your average rating is high enough, customers expect written reviews to be mostly positive. 

In essence, being on Yelp is practically mandatory in this day and age, but it doesn’t come without risk. Read more

Driver shortage

TIME Claims There’s No Truck Driver Shortage. Here’s Where They’re Wrong

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Time Magazine published an article in late 2021 claiming that the truck driver shortage is a fallacy. As a decades-old trucking company, we beg to differ. While their statistics are on point, Time lacks perspective. To clear things up, here’s an insider view on one of the biggest issues plaguing America’s supply chain issues today. 

The claim: The driver shortage doesn’t exist.

To start, TIME’s infamous article covered some indisputable basics: America’s supply chain is struggling, leading to frustrating delays over the holidays and ongoing product shortages. The crisis began months ago, and yet our favorite muffin at Starbucks and the new smartphone we saved up for remains stubbornly unavailable. 

Many experts have cited a truck driver shortage– the largest we’ve seen in decades, as a strong contributing factor to the recurrent delays, but TIME says it doesn’t exist. To be specific, their article stated that:

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CFL

CFL, A 96-Year-Old Freight Company, Just Went Under. The Scary Truth About the Future for Carriers.

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If our headline seems melodramatic, that’s only because the news hasn’t covered this nearly enough. Central Freight Lines, also known as CFL, was founded in Waco, Texas in 1925. Nearly a century later in 2020, it won the title of Carrier of the Year from GlobalTranz. Yet, despite 96 years of excellence and expertise, just announced that they’re ceasing operation. 

CFL announcement

CFL’s announcement on their company’s homepage.

The logistics giant stopped picking up freight on December 13, and aimed to make all remaining deliveries by the 20th. While BYX is alive and well, the downfall of CFL is proof that no LTL carrier is immune to the effects of driver shortages and rapidly rising expenses. 

Where did CFL go wrong? 

Truth be told, it didn’t. The climate for logistics companies has turned increasingly volatile. The company’s announcement may come as a shock, but in reality, it came after years of struggling to remain profitable. Jerry Moyes, CFL’s owner, took up the reigns as CFL’s interim president and CEO in July, 2021 in an attempt to reduce expenses, pouring as much money into it as he could, but it simply wasn’t enough.  Read more

Logistics technology improving trucking efficiency

Can Logistics Technology Help Solve the Global Supply Chain Crisis?

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 Yes, and we’ll tell you exactly how. For many, the severity of the global supply chain crisis is somewhat of a revelation; it’s only sinking in now because of out-of-stock products at our favorite retail giants, like Amazon, Target, and even Starbucks. Anyone working in the logistics industry, however, isn’t shocked in the slightest. The pandemic acted as the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the global supply chain wasn’t working efficiently to begin with.

Now, as we’re scrambling to solve the supply chain problem and get global trade back on track, we’ve come across a surprisingly simple solution: An ordinary app.  Read more

Supply chain crisis double exposure

8 Tips For Dealing With the Supply Chain Crisis

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In the past year, companies of all shapes and sizes have been hit hard by uncertainty, shutdowns and unpredictable demand shortages. Now, we’re also facing a prolonged supply chain crisis. It’s been a long time coming, but the COVID-19 pandemic made matters substantially worse.

With the supply chain issues forecasted to continue well into 2022, what’s a business owner to do? While completely safeguarding your business from complications is impossible, these eight steps will help you get through today’s crisis and prepare for future disruptions.  Read more

Ships like this one are struggling to unload cargo due to the global supply chain crisis

The Global Supply Chain Crisis of 2021: Here’s What to Expect

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Go to a department store and try to buy a dress for a wedding. Can’t find one? It’s not just you. The shelves have been picked clean of countless different products, from clothing to certain food items and takeout boxes. The items that we used to take for granted seem to be in short supply. Prices won’t quit climbing. But why? Our global supply chain wasn’t built for e-commerce in the first place.

To Start, the System Was Already Struggling

When a customer placed an order 20 years ago, they expected to receive their package in a couple of weeks. Now, we get antsy if it’s been a couple of days. The global supply chain, however, has struggled to meet the demand for more and more products to be delivered faster than ever. 

While ordering a product online might seem like the easy option, there’s more to it behind the scenes. The process to actually manufacturer a product, sell it, and deliver it to your doorstep is complex. First, the supplies to produce the product need to be shipped to the manufacturer. Then, the products have to make their way through a complicated import and export system to make it to U.S. retailers. Then, products are shipped, often being passed through many hands before they make it to your door.  Read more

pallet shipping

Pallet Prices Remain Sky High. Here’s What It Means For You

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For decades, pallets were commonplace and inexpensive. They were so easy to come by that people even made tutorials on how to repurpose them, making them into DIY furniture. Unfortunately, the days of turning old pallets into bookshelves and garden art are on pause. Earlier in 2021, the prices of lumber soared, and the prices of every single wooden pallet rose along with them. But why? 

Like countless other problems, the lumber shortage began with COVID

To start, the lockdown in early 2020 had all of us stuck at home. While some of us spontaneously learned to bake bread, thousands of others decided it would be the perfect time to start that DIY home improvement project they’d been putting off. The demand for lumber increased, but there was a problem: The sawmills weren’t even open.  Read more

reputable shipping company

Shopping Around: Is it Worth It

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Before you read any further, we’ll give you an honest answer: No. Of course, that’s exactly what you’d expect a trucking company to say. Who would encourage customers to shop elsewhere? That being said, even if you’re trying to choose a trucking company in a different area (or even chose one of our competitors!), our recommendation stands. Choose a reputable shipping company and stick with it.

Why not shop around for a lower quote, you ask? Let’s get into it.

If you spend some time on Google, the odds are good that you’ll find someone who will ship your goods for less than BYX will. Most likely, those offering lower prices are owner operators. As you probably guessed by the name, owner operators buy a truck and haul loads themselves. They often work with freight brokers who coordinate with customers and take a cut of the profit.

We already covered why freight brokers are unnecessary and a huge waste of money here, but there’s more to it than that. Even the best owner operator has significant limitations in comparison to a reputable shipping company like BYX. Read more

accessorial

What Customers Need to Know About Accessorial Fees

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Was your last freight bill more than you expected it to be? These added charges are called accessorials. If you don’t know what an accessorial covers, it can come as an unpleasant surprise. As frustrating as that may be, there’s almost certainly a good reason why the invoice exceeded the original estimate. 

Why Freight Shipping Costs Aren’t Cut and Dry

Wouldn’t it be nice if freight charges were as straightforward as shopping at Target? In retail stores, the price advertised on the tag is always exact, aside from sales tax. That’s because there are no surprises for the item’s manufacturer. By the time you toss it in your cart, there’s nothing that could possibly add to the company’s expenses. 

The world of freight shipping is more like plumbing or similar trade industries. We give estimates, but factors beyond our control contribute to the final bill. These accessorials are necessary to help us recover the costs of overweight shipments, inaccessible delivery locations, and similar factors that add to the expense of a given shipment.

Due to the nature of the shipping process, we typically apply fees after shipments are completed. This is because many accessorial causes occur during the shipping process itself. For this reason, the final bill may look different than our first estimate.

 

Our previous blog post went over a few of the elements that contribute to shipping costs. Let’s go over accessorial charges in more detail to help you better understand why they occur and how to avoid them. 

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Top 5 Benefits of Using a Warehouse Management System

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Businesses are always on the lookout for ways to operate more efficiently. Any business offering physical products to its customers runs into a dilemma. How and where does one store them after they’re manufactured? Depending on the product, the amount of space required can be daunting, so the warehouse management system was born.

Warehousing allows companies to safely store surplus inventory as long as needed with ease. At the same time, companies reduce their overall operating expenses. So how does it work? Let’s get to the good stuff.  Read more