[00:00:00] Lori Boyer: Welcome to Unboxing Logistics, everybody. I’m your host, Lori Boyer of EasyPost, and today we’re gonna be going into one of my favorite topics, the parcel carrier landscape. I, this is our bread and butter. This is what I deal with all day, every day. Carriers, I meet with carriers frequently. I meet with shippers all the time, and so I’ve had a lot of questions about what’s going on in the carrier network, what’s going on, what’s the landscape out there.
So I brought in the one and only Nate Skiver, guru and genius of all things carrier, the guy you need to go to if you are having questions about carriers to inform us, let us know. 2026. So Nate, I’m gonna throw it over to you. Why don’t you introduce yourself and let our Unboxing Logistics family remember.
I’m sure they know you, but if they’ve forgotten, let them remember who you are.
[00:01:00] Nate Skiver: Thanks, Lori. And I, I don’t know that I can top that intro, so but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll keep it brief here, but my name is Nate Skiver. I’m the founder of LPF Spend Management which is a parcel consultancy working really with package shippers to help them cut costs negotiate contracts and select the right delivery partners.
So I’ve, I’ve been consulting in, in parcel for the past six about six and a half years. But my, my parcel journey started in 2007. So it’s been a bit.
[00:01:38] Lori Boyer: Oh, I love that. Which aspect of the consulting do you like the most? Like I was drawn into the negotiations piece because I know that’s a lot of people kind of dread the negotiations, but is there a certain element of your consulting that you just love the most or you, you, you are an equal opportunity consultant?
[00:01:57] Nate Skiver: I mean, I think there’s a couple of aspects of it. One, I mean, I do enjoy the con the the contract negotiation piece, even though. As most people probably are aware us consultants usually work in the background on, on that. So, but advising on what’s negotiate, you know, what’s going to provide the most value, you know, to, to the shipper through that process, I, I do enjoy it.
And really being able to work with so many different companies. Yeah, that’s something that really kind of drove me to make the jump six and a half years ago is the ability to work with, you know, different types of companies, different in different industries and markets and, and so that’s really been really rewarding.
I’ve, I’ve been able to build a lot great relationships and meet you know, a lot of great people.
[00:02:52] Lori Boyer: Oh, I love that so much. I have to say, working with a variety of companies, I mean, it just really expands what you understand, and you get exposed to so many new things. Back in a previous life, I worked for a lot of years for a business guru, Tony Robbins, and because the way he would bring people in and then I’d help them with their marketing.
I worked with so many different companies. It really expands your knowledge and understanding, and you just see all kinds of different challenges. It’s really, really fun, challenging, but that’s, that’s awesome. That’s such a wealth of information, so love that you love that. Okay, I wanna talk parcel landscape.
We’re gonna jump straight into that today. When you’re looking at the landscape right now, when you’re looking across, you know, we’ve got national carriers, we’ve got regional, we’ve got really unique carriers who are doing things that are new and different. What, what would you describe the current state of our parcel carrier landscape right now? 2026.
[00:03:58] Nate Skiver: 2026. I think two things stand out. One is, there’s more competition than ever. So you, you mentioned all different types of carriers which also means that there, there are more options, more options to choose from, which is a good thing, but it introduces complexity. You know, the, the good news about that though, I mean, even though it’s complex, is that there is technology available to manage that complexity, which allows shippers to, introduce new carriers, optimize for cost delivery, reliability, and speed. And so there’s never been a better time, I think, for shippers to create value through delivery. And a lot of that comes, just comes about from the fact that there are, you know, more solutions than we’ve seen. And I think there isn’t really an unmet need in the market.
[00:04:51] Lori Boyer: Yeah, no, I, I think that’s absolutely right. Can I ask you, when we talk about all these carriers, there’s a few things that I’m kind of interested in. First, national carriers versus regional or alternative carriers, they all have their place, right? For you, do you feel like, you know, the national carriers first are having to respond or seeing, you know, are they changing at all based on all of this new competition, I guess that you’re mentioning?
Or are they just still so dominant that it’s not really impacted them?
[00:05:30] Nate Skiver: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s definitely impacting them, and I think it’s been something that has been kind of coming, you know, developing for, for several years. So it’s not only the competition. But I, I think that was, it’s a big part of it.
But also it’s just how some of the volume in the market has changed. A lot of it is, is ecommerce now. It’s, it’s lighter weight, ecommerce volume delivering to somebody’s home is, is usually less efficient than if you’re delivering 10 boxes to a store. And so those things, along with the delivery distance actually has decreased because inventory is closer to the consumer.
So UPS, I’ll just, you mentioned national carriers. We’ll talk about UPS and FedEx for a moment that. This isn’t new. They’ve, they’ve seen this coming for a long time, but I think, at least my opinion is that this influx of, of competition in, say the past five years or so that maybe UPS and FedEx didn’t expect them to all stick around, or at least not as many as, as they have.
And so that competitive element definitely is, is a factor. I think a, a response to that is both UPS and FedEx are, well, they’re trying to appease shareholders, so that’s, that’s one thing. They do have to make a profit, and part of the way they’re doing that is to increase rates more frequently, which a lot of times it’s through surcharges, either a fuel surcharge increase or changing criteria for a surcharge that effectively increases cost for shippers, but it’s kind of hard to tell. And so that’s one thing I think just through pricing that they’re doing that. The other aspect of pricing is, and I’ll just use FedEx recently they had a in investor day here, just the second week of February.
[00:07:37] Lori Boyer: Okay.
[00:07:38] Nate Skiver: And the the quote, and I don’t have it verbatim in front of me, but basically a FedEx executive said, if you ship T-shirts, then FedEx might not be for you. And it’s, it hasn’t really been stated that bluntly. It’s pretty reflective, especially with FedEx of how they’re approaching volume segments and customers.
Yeah. And so lightweight residential, T-shirts is something that they’re not pursuing actively. They’ll price it, they’ll happily take it if at the right price, but they’re intentionally really focusing elsewhere on, you know, commercial shipments like business to business healthcare, things like that.
So again, it’s not new. Both UPS and FedEx have at least, you know, said they were doing that.
But I’m, I’m seeing that summon in how they are, are pricing as well. So I think that’s the, probably the most obvious or, or biggest change it is to how they’re responding with pricing.
[00:08:47] Lori Boyer: Yeah. That’s super interesting.
I, I was reading something, I was trying to remember if it was something I saw at a show, but in the past shippers had been looking really heavily at cost only with carriers, but we’re starting to see a slight shift into where people are also concerned about continuity or just stick around factor, you know, because we do have a lot of new entrants to the market, but people, sometimes companies are folding.
You know, we recently saw that with FAST Group. And so there’s a little bit of concern on the top, on the side of shippers about some of the alternative carriers. Are, is this an issue you’re seeing? Do you agree that they should be concerned? Do you think that that’s an overblown fear?
[00:09:42] Nate Skiver: I mean, it depends on how you, you frame it.
I, I think, yes, there are alternative carriers that will exit the market this year. Like I would be willing to wager a fair amount of money on that. That’s that’s going to happen. So it’s a legitimate concern, but I think it’s, it’s something to where you, you vet your partners that you choose to work with.
And it’s a, a risk that you are either willing to take on or not, but it’s not as though companies I don’t think should ignore options like that. Do your due diligence. Learn as much as you can about the company, their customers, all, all of the things that you can, but don’t take on too much risk.
Don’t devote 40% of your volume maybe to an alternative carrier if you truly had that much of a concern. I don’t think you would do that anyway. That’s probably pretty obvious, but I think it’s, it’s really just assessing the risk.
Maybe the probability of it happening. I mean, if you knew that it. I could probably do some other things with that type of.
[00:10:57] Lori Boyer: I was gonna say, I think they, you’d be better than us.
[00:10:59] Nate Skiver: Right. But I, I really, I think it’s, it’s only broadly, I guess, valid. Okay. You really have to focus on that particular provider, what.
[00:11:11] Lori Boyer: There’s a risk for every supplier, every, everything that there’s, that they could close. So I, yeah, I’m kind of with you. It’s like there’s always a slight risk, but if you’re doing your vetting and, and keeping a, a healthy mix, which kind of brings me, I like how you mentioned, oh, you know, I’m 40% of your shipments going through someone who’s questionable. Do you feel like there is a healthy mix? You know, obviously I still talk with people who are surprisingly large who have a single carrier, and that like blows my mind for so many reasons. Risk themselves, but, you know, not even just cost, but risk. What do you feel like is a good kind of healthy mix for how many carriers?
Do, do you have a rule of thumb, like, oh, 17 carriers, way too many. One carrier, way too few. I know it’s gonna depend.
[00:12:00] Nate Skiver: Exactly.
[00:12:00] Lori Boyer: On the company, but.
[00:12:02] Nate Skiver: That’s exactly right. I would say there’s 17 way too many and, and one way too few. It, I hate to say I, I’m just going to open with it depends. And it really does.
But it depends a lot of things with a particular shipper and it’s, I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot of factors. How much volume you ship. If you ship 500 packages a day, chances are, there’s not going to be a lot of benefit or maybe even ability to use more than one carrier. If you ship 50,000 packages a day, I think you’ve got some options.
And then it’s, it’s really about how, how intentional you are with your program and if you have very clearly defined goals and you invest time, resources into finding delivery providers, solutions, that fit a specific need, whether it’s, you know, delivery speed in a particular geography, or it’s a low cost carrier that can help with support the, the lightweight residential packages.
It’s defining what those like really specific needs are, and then finding carriers to meet those needs. That might look like three carriers for a kind of mid-sized company, something like that. It could be 12 for a really large shipper. And the other thing I think is that, that plays into this is your, I don’t wanna say willingness or, and or ability to take on and manage the complexity.
So a portion of that is, is technology. So if you have a shipping technology solution in place that can do more than just, you know, rate shop. It’s got a lot of intelligence around the estimated delivery date, measuring performance against it, things like that. Taking other criteria into consideration.
So I think technology is a big piece. If it’s not there, then right now, you probably shouldn’t have 10 or 12 carriers. And it’s just, it’s interesting. There’s no one kind of broad, you know, statement to make there. I, I will tell you, I recently, I talked with a, a retailer that is a large retailer, but not one of the largest for sure.
Quite a bit of volume. They have 23 carriers. And they manage that complexity through primarily technology. They’re very hands-on in managing it, running direct line hauls, zone skips on their own. So, and this isn’t a, a Walmart sized company. I mean, this is, you know, a but that’s probably the extreme. I wouldn’t expect very many, but it’s just an example of how different it can be based on, on the company.
[00:15:04] Lori Boyer: I think that’s so interesting because one of the big benefits obviously to diversifying is saving. Like there’s a lot of money that gets lost that you could potentially, by using different carriers, using different routes, using different service levels that you can save a ton. And I could see a little bit of appetite for, I was just reading an article yesterday that shared that a year ago, at this time, 13% of businesses were eating the extra costs that we’ve seen, all these rise in costs, and today it’s 40% of businesses are eating the costs. Because they don’t wanna pass it on to consumers. I think that kind of shows though, we’ve got to find ways to save.
Outside, you know? You have to be creative. Being able to have that many carriers, they can’t save a lot of money.
Where do you see, so for regional carriers or even for any of the carriers, you know, what are maybe signs that you know, it would be a good fit to use maybe a regional carrier. Are there situations, I guess, when somebody’s shipping that you would say, oh, you’re shipping a lot in this area, or you’re shipping a lot of this type of good, or, you know, that certain regional carriers might fit, or the, you know, what is their, their bread and butter?
What is their, their hot stuff?
[00:16:21] Nate Skiver: If we’re talking regional carriers, they’re, you know, regional for a reason. They, they, they cover a very specific geography. And some of them even more so, I guess, specialize in you know, residential for sure, maybe even lightweight residential. And so it kind of goes back to what I said earlier about like defining very specific needs, requirements, goals, whatever it is.
If that’s there, then use or find providers, regional carriers, that have a strength, some type of differentiating value that you don’t get maybe with your current national carrier. And, and a lot of times with a regional carrier, I’ll say in many cases they’re favorable from a cost standpoint. Not always, but, but they are, and, and that’s one benefit for sure.
The other one can be within, they say the Southeast, just as an example of the United States. They can be maybe faster depending on, on if it’s residential and they deliver seven days a week. That’s pretty common for a lot of regionals or alternative carriers. One thing where I think maybe, I don’t wanna say isn’t a fit, but it, it might be a bit misaligned, is if, you know, there are some regional carriers that have expanded over time.
So maybe they started in a one region. Or, and then they’ve opened, you know, operations in other large markets or maybe an entire region of the US, and now they’re kind of connecting those two networks or areas, or maybe it’s three or more. That’s where some carriers, I mean, especially if that’s a new kind of development might not be as efficient as if they are concentrated in that, you know, initial service area. And so what happens is, you know, the, literally the further that those packages travel they’re touched more times through.
[00:18:27] Lori Boyer: From the original region?
[00:18:28] Nate Skiver: Yes.
[00:18:29] Lori Boyer: Is what you’re talking about. Okay.
[00:18:30] Nate Skiver: Yeah. If you say ship from the southeast. And originally you were working with a regional carrier only in the southeast, service is very strong. You know cost is what it needs to be. Then that carrier has expanded to, maybe it’s a little bit more on the East Coast in New York, New Jersey, something like that. If you start to move that volume out to a longer distance it can be less efficient for that carrier.
That’s not, you know, how they’ve developed their, their service even though they’re offering it now. So there can just be some service inconsistency costs might be elevated for that carrier. Over time, they might come back and need to raise rates. So I think it’s, it’s really defining which providers, regional carriers, where they’re strong and then aligning that to what your needs are.
I know that sounds super simple, but I think that’s where.
[00:19:25] Lori Boyer: I was gonna say it sounds simple, but how do they do that? And obviously their own needs they look at, but how do you recommend people figure out which carriers are strong in which areas?
[00:19:37] Nate Skiver: I mean, honestly, to gather information just on your own, just research.
But, but really it’s, it’s directly, I mean, that helps you, I guess, determine a list, you know, a list of carriers, right? That, that might fit a, a need. You know, of course if you have someone in your network, you know, works with that carrier, collect information that way. You can work with a third party consultant who can help with that too.
[00:20:03] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:20:04] Nate Skiver: But then also it’s engaging directly with the carrier. I mean, I know you can’t do that with 20 of them maybe, but, but that’s where you kind of start to distill that list down to maybe, I think these three or four are probably the ones we need to really get into detail with.
And you go through and evaluate their capabilities. And as best you can, determine, I think this is a fit. And ultimately, and this is not what a lot of, I think companies want to hear, if it’s an alternative carrier we’re talking about, you won’t know 100% if that carrier meets your needs until you start working with them.
[00:20:42] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Nate Skiver: And you start measuring it. And, and I think that can be, it’s not as much anymore as it used to be, but that can be kinda a sticking point. Where a, a company is hesitant to do that, but you literally won’t know until you, you start to actually work with a carrier.
[00:21:01] Lori Boyer: Okay, so that triggered two questions for me.
One, which I’m gonna come back to is when people are reaching out to carriers, are there specific things that you would recommend that they ask or that they’re trying to vet that would help. But two, so you can come back to thinking on that one, but two when you are, you’ve decided on one, you say, okay, I’m gonna try out this carrier.
Do you have a certain amount that you suggest, like, oh, I’m just gonna give them 2% of my, you know what I mean? Like how much is a test?
[00:21:34] Nate Skiver: Well, the second one depends. It does. And, and what I.
[00:21:39] Lori Boyer: Nate, you’re always saying It depends.
[00:21:41] Nate Skiver: It does.
[00:21:42] Lori Boyer: ‘Cause it’s complicated. You’re exactly right.
[00:21:45] Nate Skiver: And so you threw a percentage out there and that’s fair.
Like, that’s, that’s probably the, the best reference point to start with. But if you ship, again, from one distribution center, let’s just say retailer shipping from a a DC. If you ship 50,000 packages, then two or 3%, eh, yeah, that, that’s probably, maybe the bare minimum that might be enough for a regional carrier to handle.
And so part of that is understanding the requirements. This kinda goes back to the first part of the question, I guess, is understanding the capabilities that the carrier has and not just kind of what they have on their website, but when you get into the details, and this is kind of, kind of addressing both questions or part of the questions they want.
[00:22:35] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I love it.
[00:22:36] Nate Skiver: Is the volume a lot of times will be a big factor in fit. And if this particular carrier maybe, if they have volume minimums a lot of times. On a daily basis because they have to make the best use of their assets you know, the pickup, the middle mile, things like that. And if they’ve got a volume minimum of 2,000 packages a day, and let’s change the total number you ship now let’s just say you, you only ship 10,000 a day.
Well, you have to determine like really, really vet then that service provider and be highly confident they’re gonna meet your needs and you can provide that much volume. Because really the last thing you wanna do is commit, like start working with a carrier and then you can’t supply the volume that they need to provide you with competitive pricing.
And so and so, I think that’s where you have to just communicate very clearly. It has to be transparency on both sides. A carrier can’t overcommit, and you have to be very cognizant of the amount of volume that you’re, you’re willing to, to commit. I mean that’s, I think, maybe more of a basis on actually working with them, you know, a, a test that, that really I’ll say highly depends because some carriers will actually do that. They’ll a pilot, they’ll just agree, we will move less volume than is kind of optimal for us for a certain period of time so you can validate the service. Other carriers might not be open to that.
[00:24:19] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:24:20] Nate Skiver: And and which is.
[00:24:21] Lori Boyer: You can ask, right?
[00:24:22] Nate Skiver: Fair. Absolutely. Yeah. The worst thing that can happen is they tell you no.
[00:24:26] Lori Boyer: Exactly.
[00:24:27] Nate Skiver: And if that’s something you require though to actually vet the, the carrier and the service before committing more volume, and they won’t do it, well then you’ve gotta move on.
[00:24:40] Lori Boyer: Yeah, no, I love that. It made me think when we were talking about what you would ask carriers do you recommend also vetting with other shippers who are using the carrier in your area?
If possible, how, how do you go about doing that?
[00:25:02] Nate Skiver: If, I mean, there’s, there’s a couple ways to do it. Ideally, you would, you being the shipper, would be able to find, determine other retailers on your own that you can kind of independently.
[00:25:18] Lori Boyer: Not the ones the carrier sends you to.
[00:25:20] Nate Skiver: Right. I mean.
[00:25:21] Lori Boyer: Their favorite customers.
[00:25:22] Nate Skiver: Yeah. You know, they’re, they’re, self-preservation.
[00:25:26] Lori Boyer: Yeah. I guess let’s get in the game here. Yeah.
[00:25:28] Nate Skiver: Send you to a customer that they’ve lost.
[00:25:30] Lori Boyer: We all do it. We know.
[00:25:31] Nate Skiver: Right?
[00:25:31] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:25:32] Nate Skiver: And so that, that can be kind of difficult. Don’t ignore the ones that the, the carriers willingly provide. I would still at least talk with one and, and talk with the company that however you wanna approach it, but that is at least somewhat similar to, to your, your volume profile or something like that.
[00:25:51] Lori Boyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:52] Nate Skiver: But yes, I mean, that’s. It’s kind of difficult sometimes particularly if, if that carrier hasn’t been in the market that long. And, and that’s kind of leads to that a little bit of kind of unknown or not truly knowing until you work with them.
[00:26:11] Lori Boyer: And what your risk tolerance is, you know?
How comfortable are you taking a risk? And hopefully if they are new and they don’t have a lot, they should be willing to offer you a lot more and recognizing you’re taking a risk and maybe doing some of those test shipments and all of that kind of stuff. What’s interesting recently, Nate, is I feel like we’re seeing a lot of shippers being really concerned about things like surcharges, but not just surcharges.
It’s like the unknown. So I recently did a deep dive into all of the calls done at EasyPost. You know, of course we deal with carriers all the time, and so, one of the number one things people were mentioning on calls is feeling like they had a lack of transparency with carriers not knowing when a surcharge was gonna suddenly appear or seeing charges on their bill that they did not expect.
And feeling kind of this uncertainty about when extra charges may pop up. Do you have any recommendations for people around that issue?
[00:27:11] Nate Skiver: Yeah, there, there are a few things you can do. And really, the, the way that I guess that, that surfaces, we talked about it a little bit earlier. Most often, not always, is, is UPS and FedEx just based on how they price. Their, their pricing is very complex.
The past year, little over a year, they have changed the pricing, increased rates or, or changed surcharges much more frequently. So usually that’s probably going to be the driver of those, those concerns is guess in FedEx, how they price. I mean, one is if you have the internal resources, if you have the personnel, um to, to really dedicate at least a person to managing, building that parcel program, but really staying on top of the market. I don’t have, you know, it’s part of what I do. One other way to do that, of course, is to partner with a third party whether it’s, you know consulting I do that, I provide that type of value to clients.
There are other, like parcel spend management companies that as part of the services they offer is making sure that they’re on top of pricing changes and they can inform their customers. And then the other thing I think to maybe go down into that just a little bit in more detail is if you have a parcel spend management, you know, provider solution in place, use it.
Use, use the intelligence. Because.
[00:28:48] Lori Boyer: So true. So true, Nate.
[00:28:55] Nate Skiver: Okay. It’s there, there’s a dashboard. I maybe look at it once a week and if there’s something really wrong, then I, I might look at it and, and try to dig into it. That doesn’t work. And especially not with the, the pace of change with pricing. And really the impact. There are the, the best example, I think probably, the most impact is the one that was recently made, both UPS and FedEx made changes to the criteria for the additional handling and the large package for UPS or oversized for FedEx surcharges.
[00:29:34] Lori Boyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
[00:29:34] Nate Skiver: So for companies that ship heavy and or bulky items.
[00:29:40] Lori Boyer: Yeah, it was massive.
[00:29:41] Nate Skiver: It could be massive.
I had a, a client that ships basically like home medical equipment. Scooters and, and different things like that. 11% total cost increase if it’s, if it’s unaddressed.
[00:30:01] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:30:01] Nate Skiver: And that, I mean, that’s pretty extreme, but it’s still, that’s the type of thing you won’t know about certainly if you don’t have visibility to the charges when they happen.
[00:30:15] Lori Boyer: Yes.
[00:30:16] Nate Skiver: But ideally you’d like to have, you know, be on top of it from when you see it coming. Because it does, it gets announced, you know, it’s very subtly posted on UPS and FedEx websites. Often, not always, the sales contacts for those carriers don’t proactively come out and tell customers.
So you have to go find it. And you have to either have a partner in place or be willing to do the work yourself.
[00:30:46] Lori Boyer: Yeah. It’s why people are end up being surprised. They don’t find out about it until it’s suddenly being charged. And yeah, it can be really, really, really costly. We’re about at our time where we’re gonna wrap up, but I have two last things I want to talk to you about.
First. If somebody, let’s say you’re a mid-size shipper, and they’re looking at 2026, what is a piece of advice? What should they go do? One thing that you would recommend they go do. You know, should they designate a person to be overseeing their carriers? Should they, you know, set up a time whatever, one thing specifically actionable that they can do, should they just be following certain people?
And then I would love to hear more about you specifically, and like kind of who your ideal company is, who may wanna come to you and, and use you and your services and, and just really learn a little bit more about what they would get from working with you. So first, piece of advice, and then tell us more about, you know, who, who is listening, who might actually be interested in kind of working with you.
[00:31:51] Nate Skiver: Yeah, I think with the, the mid-sized company, right, that’s what you mentioned. And we have all sizes listening.
Sure, sure.
[00:31:58] Lori Boyer: Mid-size, we’ll get that.
[00:32:00] Nate Skiver: Sure. I think there are a couple of things. One is really, really stay on top of, we kind of, we just kind of talked about this, is the rate increases. And it’s, it’s UPS and FedEx, also the Postal Service. And, and those kind of mid-sized companies are working with.
At least one or maybe two of those carriers. Just depends. I know I said that a lot, but and especially if there’s lightweight volume the Postal Service might be in place. And they’re all, again, raising rates more frequently. And you have to stay on top of that. I think as a result though, because of some of the challenges we just talked about is you have to in parallel actually.
Some of the things we’ve talked about as well is research carriers and determine if they’re a viable alternative for part of the volume that you can move from a UPS or FedEx or, or the Postal Service. And don’t wait until it’s a, a significant issue. So don’t wait until your costs have increased by 15%.
[00:33:13] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:33:14] Nate Skiver: Right. You actually do that work and sometimes you, you have to do the work and the analysis to determine if there are solutions or if there’s value to be gained. There might not. There, you could end up in a place where, okay, this is the best I can do. But you, you have to do that work. And it’s, it’s in parallel with staying on top of your, your existing, you know, program and, and the costs.
You have to in parallel do that research.
[00:33:43] Lori Boyer: Yes.
[00:33:43] Nate Skiver: And vet those carriers and determine. If or when I need to, these are the two or three or something like that, that I’m gonna reach out to, to see if I can make a change.
[00:33:55] Lori Boyer: Okay. Absolutely. I challenge, I’m throwing out the challenge to everyone listening, watching today, put a time on your calendar in the next week.
Block off one hour and sit down and do some of these research items that, that Nate’s thrown at you. Because it will really give you comfort and visibility and help you alleviate some of that feeling of like, oh no, I’m a little worried that something might happen and I just don’t have time. Just put it on your calendar. One hour. And, and take some time.
I think it’ll be huge. So, Nate, tell us about you then. So if somebody’s also just listening and just like, okay, I don’t have time, I don’t have one hour, Nate. How could they come to you? But also, you know, who is the right person to come to you? So what, what’s the right fit for you and, and what do you provide?
[00:34:42] Nate Skiver: I, I think so a lot of the consulting that I do with clients is, is project based. So it’s, it’s finite project work. And there’s, there’s two core project service offerings that, that, that I have with, with clients. One is all call kind of a traditional what a lot of companies would, would know of a contract negotiation project or a, a parcel RFP.
In that case, it’s a, a company that has knowledge enough to know we need to bid our business. So something is driving that. Either there’s significant, significant cost that needs reduced and as opposed to just negotiating with their current carriers, they know competition will help get the best results.
Contracts could be expiring, you know, something to where they’ve decided, we need to find the best carriers. We need to negotiate the best rates we can in agreement terms. Let’s find help doing that.
[00:35:49] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:35:49] Nate Skiver: And so in those cases from a, a client, you know, kind of company standpoint, what I would, I guess, considering my background is enterprise retail.
I would say that the, the client base though really kinda mid, mid, mid-size companies is what I would kind of, you know, broadly say. I mean, I’ve had clients with as, as little as $2 million annual spend up to in excess of a hundred million. But really where those projects, I think provide the, the most value and, and where I can efficiently work with clients is in that really two to $20 million range.
[00:36:29] Lori Boyer: Perfect.
[00:36:29] Nate Skiver: And it’s those that again, know they need that, you know, expertise the, the heavy lifting on the analysis and things like that. And then the other one, just real briefly, is for companies that don’t necessarily know if there’s an opportunity and I’ll perform a program assessment.
That’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s evaluating the current program from a contr an agreement term standpoint. Rates, providing feedback that’s much more detailed than benchmarking it. It’s very, very specific about where I would expect the pricing to be for a company of that size and, and spend. And then there’s, there’s recommendations also with that of if you choose to do it on your own, this is what you could potentially achieve with savings, different carrier options.
If you contract and, and work with, with me on an RFP project, then this is also what you can expect from a savings perspective and carrier mix. So those two things, I think are the, the best examples of, of client projects. And largely that what I’ll again say, kind of mid, mid market maybe, maybe two to $20 million in spend.
[00:37:49] Lori Boyer: Perfect. I love it.
Where, where should they reach out to you? LinkedIn, website.
[00:37:54] Nate Skiver: LinkedIn is, LinkedIn’s the best best way to do it.
[00:37:57] Lori Boyer: I, I love it. If you don’t follow Nate on LinkedIn. Totally do. When we were talking about research, he’s throwing up the info for us there, so follow, keep up to date with it. There, there’s so much for us to know and fortunately we can just steal some of it from Nate’s brain, so.
[00:38:14] Nate Skiver: Yeah, sure.
[00:38:15] Lori Boyer: That’s what I like to do. Steal my knowledge from others, so make sure you’re following. Nate, this has been really, really great. I appreciate you coming on. Carriers is a complex world. Continuing to get more complex. But I think we can’t just hide it from it and hope that maybe it doesn’t turn into a problem, so.
[00:38:32] Nate Skiver: Absolutely.
[00:38:33] Lori Boyer: Thank you. Nate, any final words?
[00:38:36] Nate Skiver: Final words? I don’t know. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve talked about quite a bit. I appreciate, always love to, to chat and I look forward to, to doing it again next time.
[00:38:45] Lori Boyer: Awesome. All right. We’ll see you all next time.
[00:38:47] Nate Skiver: Alright.
