Words of Advice for Finding a 3PL Provider From the President of a 3PL Company

We have the pleasure of working with hundreds of great 3PL organization throughout the US. These companies have a wealth of information to share about finding a 3pl provider and other industry information. Occasionally, we like to ask the President of one of our vendors to share some insights. This month, we have the pleasure of speaking with Sam Souvall, President of Anchor 3PL in Utah (www.anchor3pl.com). We posed the question, how does a 3PL company differentiate itself from all of the competition out there in the logistics world.

Sam Wrote:

“Most 3PL companies out there will tell you that they offer the best 3PL services and the best pricing, so neither one of these two critical success factors can be the only determining factors when choosing a 3PL to service your needs. There are a lot of great firms out there that do a good job and many that offer very competitive terms. So at Anchor 3PL, we’ve found that there has to be something more than these factors in order to get the opportunity to work with a company. And the differentiating factor at Anchor 3PL can be simply described as “being a consultant.”

As a small to medium sized business owner, sometimes you find yourself alone without many options in terms of getting advice. So when a 3PL company can act as a consultant in other related areas of the business, there’s tremendous value that can help push the business forward to new heights. For example, at Anchor 3PL we have established contacts with overseas manufacturing sources so that we can help clients get products produced at much lower rates. The process of identifying and managing an overseas provider is very difficult and quite intimidating, so our pre-existing relationships allow our customers to walk into a friendly and painless scenario for their manufacturing. And our consultative approach doesn’t stop at manufacturing. We offer a number of different areas of expertise in running a small business.

And it gets very interesting when our customers can interface with us on the same basis, offering up new services and insights to us that we can use or offer to our customers. So really, I think it boils down to truly become a partner. This is what separates an average 3PL company from a stellar 3PL company.”