The program differs from UPS’ existing Freight LTL Urgent program, a premium service that will guarantee a time-of-day delivery, and from another UPS fee-based guarantee service that costs 25% of net shipping charges.

“When UPS Freight customers generate a bill of lading for a standard shipment and are under the UPS Freight 560 tariff, they are quoted a guaranteed delivery date,” UPS’ Diana Hatcher told SCDigest. “Offering such guarantees at no additional cost is not common industry practice. Offering a guarantee at no additional cost reassures our customers that we are paying close attention to their shipment… Much like a small package customer has real-time visibility tracking of their shipment, UPS Freight has brought to its customers the same level of real-time visibility and customers can track from the same UPS Web site.”

Guarantees are Emerging – Sort of

A number of LTL providers have either express guaranteed shipments for time-specific deliveries, or more recently some form of general delivery time commitment. The guarantees are generally based on service tables at a “zip code to zip code” level.

In September, for example, YRC’s USF Holland group announced guaranteed time-specific LTL delivery for various time windows on the promised day of service – again, for an unspecified extra express shipment fee.

Regional LTL carrier New Century offers express LTL rates and also guarantees delivery before 5 P.M. local time on its routes as determined by its published service tables at the time of shipment. The catch: the shipper must clearly and legibly write “Target Date Guarantee” on the bill of lading, and notify the pickup driver at the time of pickup request – and then pay a fee of 20% of the shipper’s normal rate or $25.00, whichever is greater.

ConWay claims to be the first in the LTL industry to have offered guaranteed on-time delivery, beginning several years ago. Con-Way’s program also requires use of full “current” tariffs, and does not include “Points not served direct, temperature-controlled items, shipments “marked for,” or which require liftgate service, hazardous material shipments, and shipments affected by acts of God.”

Greg Aimi, an analyst with AMR Research in Boston, notes however that UPS’ proven technology strength could ultimately give it some important advantages in this area.

“This set of features can be made available because of UPS' technology investments,” Aimi noted. “More and more, companies are acting like consumers and want real-time visibility into deliveries and purchases.”

But, he added, if there starts to be any questions about whether the delivery was, in fact, made on time by any of the LTL carriers making the guarantees, you can “look for the freight payment and audit providers to start making a business out of auditing freight charges against actual delivery verifications just like they've been doing for other guaranteed delivery services.”

Moving Towards Performance-Based Logistics?

At one level, the delivery guarantees can be seen as another aspect of the growing interest in “Performance-Based Logistics” – a concept being largely developed by the US Military and other government agencies for use with third party logistics providers, but starting to creep into other sectors.

“This could be viewed as an aspect of Performance-Based Logistics” agreed SCDigest Contributing Editor Gene Tyndall, a former senior executive at Ryder. “The delivery guarantee would be part of this new wave of doing the right things right.”

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