Got Freight? Here's Some Advice

By Rachel Wimberly -- Tradeshow Week, 3/19/2007

Ask exhibitors who've been around awhile their worst transportation story and — if they're actually willing to go out on a limb and risk drawing the ire of suppliers — you'll get an earful.

On the other hand, it's the suppliers that sometimes save exhibitors in a serious jam.

Take transportation companies, for instance. Deb Lang, manager of trade show and product promotion for Wells' Dairy, told the tale of a transportation company that was hired to pick up a crate in Florida and deliver it to Chicago. When the driver arrived to pick it up, the warehouse had shipped it to the wrong show in Pennsylvania.

"At least the transportation company I hired was good at communicating, and we got it resolved," Lang said. After finding out where the crate was, her contractor "even drove to Pennsylvania from Florida and delivered it to Chicago, just in time for the show. Of course, the warehouse that made the mistake had to pay for the extra transportation," she added.

The key to a good transportation-exhibitor relationship is fourfold, according to Lang: "It's good communication between the exhibit house, the exhibit manager and the transportation company, and keeping good records of the shipments."

Exhibitors have a million such stories to tell about near-disasters with show freight. For every one, there's a word of advice from exhibit transporters about how to avoid these situations.

Associate Editor Rachel Wimberly spoke with transportation companies to find out how exhibitors can make things easier on themselves.

Michael Hill, Tradeshow Transportation Logistics vice president, is a freight forwarder, so it's his job to be on top of every aspect of the transportation biz. What's number one on his advice list? If exhibitors took the time to plan ahead, he said, they could save themselves a bundle on shipping costs.

"It's like buying an airline ticket," Hill added. "If you plan in advance of the delivery date, at least a week or two, you will get the economy rate."

Moving down his long list of recommendations, Hill said that even if there's a general service contractor on the show's site with its own transportation division, exhibitors can still choose to have another transportation company deliver and pick up their freight.

"Sometimes service contractors try to make it sound like (exhibitors) need to use them, but exhibitors are free to use whoever they want," he said. "Realizing this, exhibitors can get better rates, and it creates competition."

After a show, exhibitors usually want to get out of town as fast as possible, but if they don't take the time to fill out their Material Handling Agreement properly and get it to the right person, Hill said, it could end up costing them.

"If there is no Material Handling Agreement, or it can't be found, the on-site contractor can force the freight (transport it themselves)," he warned. An on-site contractor won't turn over freight to a transportation company without an agreement. As a result, the exhibitor still has to pay for any attempt made by the transportation company that was meant to pick it up.

GES already had a huge on-site contracting business, so it just made sense for the company to branch out six years ago into transportation as well.

"We took a look at what exhibitors wanted," said Phil Monforte, GES Logistics senior director of logistics and transportation. "They wanted an all-inclusive invoice, on-site representation, expedited move-in and an extension of their operations."

In other words, everything GES could offer.

Working so closely with exhibitors, Monforte has a few ideas about what could make their jobs easier. "Understand the move-in and move-out parameters and the schedules they are run on," he said. "Also, choose a carrier that understands tradeshows and the move-in, move-out process."

He also advised exhibitors to watch out for extra costs in shipping. If an exhibitor picks a transportation company that doesn't usually deal with tradeshows, he said, he or she could get hit with a lot of surcharges.

Also, be aware that companies charge for the dimensions of freight and how much space it takes up in a truck, Monforte added. An exhibitor could have a really light load, but if it's bulky, it could still be costly.

Got a slot machine, motorcycle or snowmobile that needs to be shipped to a show? For more than 25 years, Sports Associated has specialized in "anything that's odd-shaped that needs to be handled with care," said George Hersh, CEO and owner of the company.

Because the shipments require a special touch, Sports Associated stores, transports, sets up, disassembles and takes them back — creating a close working relationship with its clients in the process.

"If I was an exhibitor, and I was new in the business, I would want to build a relationship with a carrier, especially the operations department," Hersh said. Knowing how things work (and who to call when they don't) makes all the difference, he added.

Exhibitors also need to consider how the exhibit that's being dreamt up by some designer is actually going to fit in a truck, and how much it will cost to take up the space it needs, Hersh added.

"Exhibits are built and then the carriers are an afterthought," he said. "Sometimes the price of a crate to ship a plasma TV costs as much as the TV itself."

And lastly, "Cheaper, better, faster" is a mantra Hersh hears from exhibitors all the time. "You can't have them all together," he said. "Maybe two of them, but if you're going to spend half a million on your exhibit and then hire a low-cost carrier to get it there, what if they don't show up?"

The tradeshow division at Champion Logistics Group handles between 18,000 and 25,000 shipments annually, so there's not a lot of room for error. One way exhibitors can avoid something getting lost along the way, Dave Harmon, Champion Logistics Group's director of tradeshow services, said, is to make sure everything is labeled properly.

"The hardest point for us to get across to customers is proper labeling on what they are going to ship," he added.

So what's proper labeling?

• Don't put the label just on top of a box or just on one box on the palette. Put multiple labels all over each box.
• Take off all old labels. Harmon has seen instances where something was shipped to a show that already took place.
• Make the labels at least 5 ½″ × 7″.
• The Material Handling Agreement has to match the information on the labels.

If a label's messed up in any way, or missing, freight operators can't move it. "The general service contractor tries to call on-site, but if they can't get a hold of the exhibitor, they have to take the freight back to a warehouse and wait," Harmon said. "It's a piece of business lost to the transportation company, and the exhibitor gets charged for the pick-up attempt."