Q: When should shippers be more concerned about value-added services and less driven by rates?
A: Value-added services become pertinent when looking at the total cost of a supply chain decision. For example, if your product originates in China and needs to be reworked to provide additional value, you can easily return the product back to the factory in China, but the value-add of partnering with a 3PL provider who can do the re-work here in the U.S. has the potential to pay dividends. This especially becomes apparent in the race to be the first to market. In this situation, the ability to get product to market, quickly, can far outweigh the logistics need to save costs.