by Paul Scott Abbott
A pair of innovators from the Show Me State are showing those involved in the shipment of air cargo how easy it can be to find freight rates in an industry in which such calculations have been heretofore hard to pin down.
Friends since kindergarten days in Grain Valley, Mo., where her parents and his grandparents still live next door, Debbie Radford and Warren Peak have combined their respective expertises to produce the Airfreight RateFinder field software system. Radford, with a dozen years experience in less-than-truck load (LTL) trucking and most recently air freight sales, and Peak, with 13 years of work in electronics hardware and software engineering, now live, separately, in Deerfield Beach, Fla., and are Chief of Marketing and President, respectively, of Peak Engineering Inc.
Program "so cool"
"It's phenomenal," Radford said of the system, which has been going through a yearlong field test at Continental Freight Forwarding Inc. of Miami, at which she is a sales executive. "This program is so cool. I love it."
The Airfreight RateFinder takes what traditionally has been a highly manual process because of the great number of variable elements involved and simplifies it in an automated task, taking into account such variables as "airport code routing, oversized factors, beyonds, hot shots, liftgate, residentials and more," according to Radford.
"There has been a feeling among freight forwarders that there are too many variables to a door-to-door delivery," Radford said of the process of pinning down such airfreight rates. "But this system calculates longitude and latitude and puts in all accessorial items so it can give an accurate quote without the manual drudgery."
Creates software
In fact, the software creates software for the user, enabling not only calculation of the freight forwarder's general tariff but also individual tariffs by Customer, Radford said. Currently, the product is designed to compute air freight rates at various levels of service from as many as 18 zones within the 48 contiguous United States, covering as many as 240 U.S. airports, and a RateFinder II version is expected to be released within about six months that includes Alaska, Hawaii and Canada. A further expanded international version could be out within a year, according to Radford, who added, "Right now, it's just how we want it to be domestically". Customers already include not only Continental Freight Forwarding but also a major sporting goods chain, with sales to several other forwarders and Fortune 500 companies pending, Radford said.
Aim pinpointed
"I always wanted to be able to give out custom software diskettes to my customers like I did when I was with CF," said Radford, who conceded that she figured that doing so would help her build up her client base. She turned to her old friend, Peak, whose prior accomplishments had included innovative software development for a diverse roster of clients ranging from H&R Block Inc. to Yellow Freight Inc. to the U.S. Department of Defense. A year later, emerged the Airfreight RateFinder
Miami Air Shipper March - June 2000
