Last month, we explored some of the key requirements for successful mission-critical shipments, taking a close look at the importance of advanced planning. This month, we’re continuing our mission-critical shipping series with a deep-dive into two more aspects — route planning and travel restrictions.
Mission-critical shipping has high stakes because it requires multiple levels of precision and planning at every stage. Whether you’re shipping heavy haul construction materials, oversized products like generators and wind turbines, or industrial equipment like heavy duty air conditioning units and prefabricated buildings—these types of shipments often have common requirements, including:
- Precise timing and delivery windows for just-in-time (JIT) delivery
- Heavy weights and/or oversized dimensions
- Specialized equipment and escort vehicles
- Veteran, highly-trained drivers
- Meticulous pre-planning and routing
- Heightened safety measures and securement procedures
Getting where you want to go, efficiently and safely
With mission-critical shipments, understanding exactly how the shipment will be routed, what travel restrictions there might be, and ensuring that all documentation is in place is vital. This aspect of mission critical shipping is extremely complex and requires the right tools and depth of expertise to cover all the bases. Let’s take a closer look at:
- Requirements for permits. Legal requirements and regulations vary from one state and country to another. In fact, each city, state, or country your shipment travels through may have specific requirements for permits. For oversize and over-dimensional loads, having the right permitting in advance is non-negotiable for successful, timely shipments.
- Current or planned road construction. We all know that travel can be complicated by road construction, leading to detours and sub-optimal road conditions, at any time. With mission critical shipments, running into unplanned-for road construction can be disastrous. Thorough advance planning allows you to make sure that any detours can handle the type of load you are shipping — including the size, dimensions, or the weight of the load.
- Timing limitations and curfews. Often, there are restrictions for when these types of unusual loads can be on the road. For instance, times might be limited to weekdays, restricting weekend travel, or have curfews where loads cannot travel after a certain time of day.
- Estimated transit time. It’s also important to estimate how long it will take to move the shipment from its origin to its destination, accounting for all necessary stops for fueling, meals and driver hours of service.
Finalizing the Ship Plan
With the route plan and travel restriction details in hand, it is time to conduct a final review with key stakeholders. One way to help keep the plan running smoothly is to confirm all loads are aligned in a project management platform to generate the final ship plan. Momentum Transportation, an award-winning Landstar Agent uses a sophisticated project management tool, for exactly this purpose. It brings all the pre-planning details together and allows the project team to both see the big picture — and manage every detail.
The ship plan is shared with all mission-critical shipment stakeholders, giving everyone involved full visibility to any updates or changes, as well as real-time tracking for each shipment. The ship plan is monitored and revised collaboratively to account for supply or delivery constraints and to minimize unplanned cost overruns.
Why Momentum is perfectly suited to handle your next Mission Critical shipment
That is an abundance of pre-planning — and the shipment hasn’t even hit the road yet! Without this detailed level of pre-planning, though, your shipment is destined for trouble.
We can help. After more than 6,000 heavy haul and specialized shipments of this nature, Momentum is proud to report an average on-time delivery rate of 99% with 99% of mission critical shipments arriving damage free.
We offer highly-trained drivers, specialized equipment and outstanding transportation safety and compliance practices to make your next mission critical shipment a success. And finally, due to the complexities of these kinds of shipments, our Project Management experts are skilled at coordinating exacting details to make the entire planning, in-transit, and delivery process a success.
To learn more about how Momentum Transportation can help you with your mission-critical shipping needs, contact us at www.landstar-agent.com.
This blog post is the second in a series that discusses how to achieve success when shipping mission-critical products using methods like heavy haul, flatbeds, escorts and more.