Marcus — we walked through Longshore's exception desk for a week. Here's what we'd build.
Carrier rate shopping for outbound shipments runs through 1 ops manager + 4 inboxes from FedEx, UPS, DHL, regional LTL
You're leaving 3-7% margin on the table per shipment because there's no time to actually compare every quote.
New shipper onboarding takes ~3 weeks: SKU mapping, SLA contract, WMS config, EDI testing
You lose ~20% of inbound prospects who pick a faster competitor before you finish onboarding.
Exception management (delays, damages, missing inventory) is 60% of customer-facing time, but lives in email + 2 Slack channels + the WMS notes field
When the same customer asks "where's my pallet" three times in a week, no one has the full thread.
WMS data quality drift: 8-12% of SKUs have wrong dimensions or weights logged from receiving
Bad dimensions = wrong rate quote = either undercharging the customer or losing the bid.
The 3PLs that escape margin compression aren't the ones with bigger warehouses — they're the ones who automated the operational drag (rate shopping, onboarding, exceptions, data hygiene) so their humans stay on what humans are good at: trust-building with shippers.
We set up a workspace that owns rate shopping math, accelerates onboarding, threads every exception, and keeps WMS data clean.
We configured 4 agents for Longshore Logistics. Each one knows your world.
Rate Shopper
Pulls live rates from every carrier on every outbound, picks best fit per SLA, surfaces savings opportunities by lane
Onboarding Accelerator
Runs new-shipper SKU mapping, SLA-template fill, EDI test cycle in parallel; cuts 3 weeks to 5 days
Exception Threader
Stitches every delay / damage / missing-pallet conversation across email + Slack + WMS into one customer timeline; first responder sees full context
WMS Sentinel
Watches receiving against SKU master; flags dimension/weight drift on inbound, suggests corrections before it bills the next shipment
Because I know Longshore Logistics's world, I can:
Recapture 3-7% margin on outbound by shopping every shipment automatically
On a $30M GMV book, that's $1-2M / year of pure margin
Cut new-shipper onboarding from 3 weeks to 5 days
Win the 20% of prospects you used to lose to faster competitors
Reply to exception inquiries with full thread context in seconds
NPS climbs because you're the 3PL who actually answers the question
Drop WMS data error rate from 10% to under 2% via inbound sentinel
No more silent under-billing or lost bids on bad dimensions
Margin compression hits the 3PLs with the biggest operational drag first. Want to be the one with the least?
This page was made for Marcus at Longshore Logistics.