I continue to ask carrier sales representatives about the various job titles they call upon.  My instincts tell me that the days of the Traffic Manager or Transportation Manager have all but disappeared.  I do engage with Logistics Managers from time-to-time but only in larger organizations and their responsibilities go well beyond the management of shipping.  In most cases, Logistics Managers play the role of supply chain manager and are involved with purchasing, warehousing, inventory, order fulfillment and customer satisfaction. Yes, transportation management falls in this role, but only as a complimentary role.

 Logistics and Supply Chain Managers mainly reside in very large organizations with multi-million dollar budgets.  Small and mid-sized companies have mostly determined that having anyone with extensive knowledge of logistics and, especially transportation, is a luxury they often cannot afford.  Thus companies either just get by, hire a third party logistics company to assist them or do nothing.

 The reason traffic and transportation managers were so abundant 20 years ago is that shipping costs can be a substantial portion of the supply chain equation.  A traffic manager could easily be justified, especially with budgets in excess of $1 million.  The complexity of transportation has not decreased, in fact, it has probably increased.  So what happened?  Like so many positions, companies that ship or receive goods simply could not afford the extra resource.

 Unfortunately, CEOs, CFOs and COOs of organizations don’t understand the inner-workings of shipping and whomever they have managing the function is expected to “figure it out.”  When I talk to C level executives, they trust their people to do the best job, but in all too many cases, don’t provide their people the tools and authority to manage the function.  For example, I know transportation managers who have a $1 million budget, but are not authorized to purchase a new pen.  They can make costly routing decisions, but cannot make other critical decisions about overall transportation strategy.

 The C level has to understand that shipping costs are going to continuously increase and that if they really want to prevent that from happening, or minimize the increases, they have to empower the people doing the work, and more importantly provide them tools.  These tools take the form of software programs to help optimize routings, collect detailed data, integrate with other systems, and insource what might be outsourced.

 I often joke with CFOs that if they wanted they could create financial reports and controls using a simple spreadsheet.  They all laugh at that suggestion as it would be totally counter-productive and waste a lot of time.  Giving the people who ship or buy product , transportation management software is the equivalent of using accounting software in place of spreadsheets.  If the C level really wants to know what is happening in the shipping trenches, simply talk to a transportation management software provider and compare the functions that can be automated and optimized versus functions being managed manually and sub-optimally.