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How do I get our logistics ready for peak season?

Key Takeaways

  • Peak season planning starts with a shared volume forecast. Sit down with sales and production, agree on expected loads by week and lane, and write it down.
  • Book capacity before you need it. Share the forecast with your approved carriers early and ask what they can commit to, lane by lane.
  • Every key lane needs a backup carrier that is already approved. Peak is the wrong time to set up a new carrier from scratch.
  • Dock hours, appointments and customer communication decide how smoothly peak runs. Most peak problems show up at the dock and in the customer's inbox, not on the highway.
  • Set rules for expedites before the rush. Decide who can approve a rush shipment, what it can cost and who pays, so the decision isn't made in a panic.
  • Wilson, by Cartage, is an AI logistics agent that quotes, books, tracks and handles exceptions on every load, which keeps the routine work moving when volume climbs.

How do I get our logistics ready for peak season?

It's late August. The logistics manager at a building products distributor opens last year's notes from October and November. Pickups were missed because carriers were full. Two customers got their orders a week late and nobody told them until they called. The dock ran until 9 p.m. most nights, and the team paid for six expedited truckloads that, looking back, could have been planned. This year, the sales team expects volume to be higher again.

To get logistics ready for peak season, build a weekly volume forecast with sales and share it with your approved carriers early to secure capacity. Then line up backup carriers on every key lane, set dock hours, plan how customers will hear about delays and agree on rules for expedites. Run all of it on a countdown that starts at least six weeks before the peak. The work isn't complicated. It's a set of decisions that are easy to make in August and very hard to make in the middle of November.

Peak season looks different for every company. For a consumer goods manufacturer, it may be the run-up to the holidays. For a building products distributor, it may be spring and early summer. For a food manufacturer, it may be a few weeks before a specific holiday. What they share is a stretch of time when outbound volume rises, carriers get busier, and every small problem costs more than usual.

Why peak season goes wrong

Peak season rarely fails because of one big event. It fails because of many small gaps that compound. A carrier that usually accepts every load starts rejecting some. A customer that usually takes deliveries any time asks for appointments. The dock that handles 20 trucks a day is asked to handle 32. A coordinator who spends an hour a day chasing pickups now spends four. Each gap is manageable alone. Together, they push the team into firefighting, and firefighting leads to expedites, extra charges and unhappy customers.

What "ready" actually means

A team is ready for peak when five questions have clear answers:

  1. How many loads do we expect, by week, lane and mode?
  2. Which carriers have agreed to carry them, and which carriers back them up?
  3. When can the dock load trucks, and how many per day?
  4. How will customers hear about their shipments, especially when something changes?
  5. Who decides when to pay for speed, and what are the limits?

If any of these is "we'll figure it out," that's the place to start.

What steps should a peak season plan include?

A peak season plan has six parts: a forecast, capacity, backup carriers, dock capacity, customer communication and expedite rules. Work through them in that order, because each one depends on the one before.

Step 1: Forecast volume with sales and production

Start with last year's shipment history. Pull loads by week, lane, mode and customer for the same period last year. Then sit down with sales and production and ask what's different this year: new customers, lost customers, promotions, price changes, new products, new plants or warehouses.

Turn that conversation into a simple forecast. It doesn't need to be precise. A weekly estimate of loads per lane, split by mode (LTL, full truckload, parcel), is enough to talk to carriers and plan the dock. Write it down and share it with sales, production and the warehouse, so everyone works from the same numbers.

A good forecast also marks the uncertain parts. If sales thinks a large retail order might land in the third week of October, put it in the forecast as a separate line with a probability, not buried in the base volume. That way, you can ask carriers about it as a possible surge instead of a firm commitment.

Step 2: Share the forecast with carriers and book capacity

Once you have a forecast, share the relevant part with each approved carrier. Tell them which lanes, how many loads per week, what equipment and which weeks are heaviest. Then ask a direct question: how many of these loads can you commit to, at what rate?

Carriers plan their own capacity weeks in advance. A shipper that shares a forecast early is easier to plan around than one that sends surprise tenders in November. For contracted lanes, confirm that the contract rate and the committed volume still hold during peak. For lanes you usually move on the spot market, consider asking for a short peak-season commitment. The trade-offs between committed capacity and spot tendering are covered in more depth in carrier allocation vs. spot tendering.

Step 3: Line up backup carriers

Every lane that matters needs at least one backup carrier that is already approved, with rates, contacts and paperwork on file. During peak, the first carrier will sometimes reject a tender, miss a pickup or cancel a load. When that happens, the team should be able to move to the next carrier in minutes, not spend a day getting a new carrier set up. Write down the order: primary, first backup, second backup. A clear backup carrier plan makes the decision obvious when it's needed.

Step 4: Set dock hours and appointments

Look at the forecast by day and compare it with what the dock can load. If the dock loads 20 trucks a day and the forecast peaks at 30, something has to change: longer hours, a second shift, weekend loading, or moving some volume to earlier weeks. Then set pickup appointments, so carriers arrive spread across the day instead of all at once.

Step 5: Plan customer communication

Decide in advance what customers will hear and when. Will they get a shipping notice with the carrier and tracking number? Will they hear about delays before the delivery date, or after they call? Peak season is when customer service gets the most "where is my order?" calls. A plan for proactive updates cuts those calls and protects the relationship.

Step 6: Agree on expedite rules

Expedites are the most expensive part of most peak seasons. Before the rush, agree on who can approve an expedite, what it can cost, which customers or orders qualify and who pays. The details are in the decision rules section below.

How do you secure capacity, dock time and customer updates before the rush?

Capacity, dock time and customer updates are where peak plans succeed or fail in practice. Each one needs a few specific actions, taken early.

Talk to carriers in terms they can plan around

A carrier can't do much with "we'll be busier than usual." It can do a lot with "we expect eight truckloads a week from our Ohio plant to Atlanta in weeks 42 to 47, dry van, live load, pickup between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m." Give each carrier the lanes, weekly volumes, equipment, pickup windows and delivery requirements that apply to them. Ask for a written answer.

Ask about the carrier's own peak constraints, too. Some carriers stop accepting certain lanes in peak weeks. Some apply peak surcharges. Some change pickup cutoff times. Knowing these in advance lets you plan around them instead of discovering them on a rejected tender.

Check the paperwork on every carrier you'll use

Before peak, confirm that every primary and backup carrier has current rates, insurance on file, the right contacts for dispatch and billing, and agreed accessorial terms. A backup carrier whose insurance certificate expired in September isn't a backup. Do this in the first weeks of the countdown, while there's time to fix gaps.

Plan the dock day by day

The dock is the bottleneck for most manufacturers and distributors during peak. A few practices help:

  • Spread pickups across the day. Give each carrier a pickup window, and avoid stacking all LTL pickups at 3 p.m.
  • Stage freight before the truck arrives. Orders that are picked, wrapped and labeled before the driver shows up load faster and cut detention.
  • Prepare documents ahead. Bills of lading, packing slips and pallet labels should be ready when the freight is staged, not printed while the driver waits.
  • Set a daily cutoff. Agree with sales on an order cutoff time that still lets the warehouse ship the same day or the next day.
  • Plan for holidays. Mark the days the dock, carriers or customers are closed, and plan what happens to loads in transit on those days. The holiday closure checklist covers this in detail.

Detention costs rise when docks get congested. The American Transportation Research Institute found that trucks were detained at 39.3% of stops in 2023, with more than 135 million hours of detention. Peak season makes that worse, so time at the dock deserves its own plan.

Decide what customers hear, and when

Customers forgive delays more easily than surprises. Before peak, set three rules:

  1. Every customer gets a shipping notice with the carrier, the BOL or PRO number and the expected delivery date when the load is picked up.
  2. Every delay gets reported to the customer before the delivery date, with a new date, as soon as the team knows.
  3. Key customers get a named contact for the season, so their questions don't sit in a shared inbox.

Also tell customers early about the season: order cutoffs, expected lead times and any holiday closures. A note in September saves dozens of calls in November. For a deeper look at how delay notices work, see how to automate customer updates when a shipment is delayed.

Watch the pickups that don't happen

During peak, the most common exception is the pickup that doesn't happen: the carrier accepted the load but never arrived, or arrived after the dock closed. Every pickup should have a confirmation from the carrier before the day of pickup, and the team should know within an hour of the window closing whether the truck came. The longer a missed pickup goes unnoticed, the fewer options remain for the rebooking.

What rules should you set for expedites and exceptions?

Write the rules down before peak starts, because the worst time to decide what an expedite is worth is when a customer is on the phone. Clear rules let coordinators act quickly and keep costs predictable.

Rules for expedites

An expedite is any shipment that moves faster or at higher cost than the standard plan: a team truck, an air shipment, a dedicated truck for a small load, or a premium LTL service. Set rules for:

  • Who can approve. For example, coordinators can approve up to a set amount; anything above goes to the logistics manager; anything above a higher amount goes to the VP of operations.
  • Which orders qualify. For example, orders for key accounts, orders at risk of a contractual penalty, or orders that would shut down a customer's production line.
  • Who pays. Decide in advance whether the cost goes to logistics, to sales, to the customer or to the department that caused the delay. If sales promised a date the plant couldn't meet, the cost may belong to sales.
  • How it's recorded. Every expedite should be logged with the reason, the approver and the cost, so the team can review them after peak.

Rules for exceptions

Peak season brings more exceptions, and each one needs a clear first step:

Exception First action Who decides next step Deadline
Carrier rejects tender Offer to first backup carrier on the lane Coordinator, within approved rates Same hour
Missed pickup Contact carrier for new time; if none, rebook with backup Coordinator; manager if cost exceeds limit Within one hour of window closing
Carrier cancels after acceptance Rebook from approved list; tell customer if delivery date moves Coordinator Same day
Delivery delayed in transit Get new ETA; tell customer before the original date Coordinator As soon as known
Customer asks for faster delivery Check expedite rules; quote cost Approver per expedite rules Same day
Dock can't load on time Tell carrier; adjust pickup window Warehouse lead Before driver arrives

The point of this table isn't to cover every case. It's to make sure the common cases don't need a meeting.

Common mistakes

Forecasting alone. A forecast built only by logistics misses what sales knows about customers and what production knows about capacity. Build it together.

Waiting for carriers to ask. Carriers rarely chase shippers for forecasts. The shipper that shares early gets planned for. The one that doesn't gets whatever capacity is left.

Treating backups as a list of names. A backup carrier with no rates, no insurance on file and no contact is only a name. Make every backup ready to tender.

Ignoring the dock. Many teams plan carriers carefully and then lose the gains at the dock, where trucks wait for freight that isn't staged.

Letting expedites become the plan. If the team expedites more than a few loads a week, the issue is usually the forecast, the order cutoff or capacity, not bad luck.

Telling customers too late. A customer who learns about a delay on the delivery date has lost a day to plan around it. Report delays as soon as they're known.

Not reviewing after peak. The best input for next year's plan is this year's experience. Schedule a review for the week after peak ends, while memories are fresh.

What to measure during peak

Track a few numbers every week during peak and compare them with the plan:

  • Loads shipped vs. forecast, by lane
  • Tender acceptance by carrier (how many loads the first carrier accepted)
  • On-time pickup percentage
  • On-time delivery percentage
  • Number and cost of expedites, with reasons
  • Detention hours and charges
  • Customer delay notices sent before the delivery date

These numbers tell you, week by week, whether the plan is holding or needs adjustment. They also make the after-peak review much faster.

What does a 6-week peak season countdown look like?

Use a six-week countdown, starting six weeks before the first peak week, to make sure every decision is made in time. If your peak is long or your lanes are hard to cover, start earlier.

Week Focus Tasks Owner
Week 6 Forecast Pull last year's shipments by week, lane and mode; meet sales and production; agree on a weekly forecast Logistics manager
Week 5 Capacity Share forecasts with approved carriers; ask for written commitments by lane; confirm peak surcharges and cutoffs Logistics manager, coordinators
Week 4 Backup carriers Confirm a first and second backup per key lane; check rates, insurance and contacts; fill gaps Coordinators
Week 3 Dock and documents Compare daily forecast to dock capacity; set hours and shifts; set pickup windows; prepare BOL, label and packing slip templates Warehouse lead, logistics
Week 2 Customers and rules Send customers lead times, cutoffs and holiday closures; finalize expedite and exception rules; name contacts for key accounts Logistics, customer service, sales
Week 1 Final check Confirm first two peak weeks are booked; walk the dock plan; brief the team on rules; set weekly review meeting Whole team

The final-week checklist

In the week before peak starts, check each item:

  • Forecast shared and agreed with sales, production and the warehouse
  • Written capacity answers from primary carriers on every key lane
  • First and second backup carriers approved and ready on every key lane
  • Rates, insurance and contacts on file for every carrier
  • Peak surcharges and pickup cutoffs known for each carrier
  • Dock hours, shifts and pickup windows set
  • Holiday closures for the dock, carriers and key customers marked
  • Document templates ready for BOLs, packing slips and pallet labels
  • Customers told about order cutoffs, lead times and closures
  • Expedite rules written and approved, including who pays
  • Exception rules written and shared with the team
  • Weekly peak review meeting on the calendar
  • After-peak review scheduled

During peak: a weekly rhythm

Once peak starts, hold a short weekly review with logistics, sales, production and the warehouse. Look at the numbers listed above, the next two weeks of forecast and any changes from sales. Adjust carrier tenders, dock hours and customer messages based on what you learn. A 30-minute meeting each week prevents most of the surprises that turn into expedites.

After peak: the review

Within a week of the end of peak, review what happened. Which lanes ran short of capacity? Which carriers held up and which didn't? How many expedites, for what reasons, at what cost? How accurate was the forecast? Write down three or four changes for next year, and put them in next year's countdown. For more on the day-to-day pickup work behind these numbers, the freight pickup guide covers confirmations, changes and missed pickups.

How does Wilson, by Cartage, help a team get through peak season?

Wilson, by Cartage, is an AI logistics agent that quotes, books, tracks and handles exceptions for manufacturers and distributors, so the routine work on each load keeps moving when volume rises and the team can focus on the decisions. Traditional logistics software gives teams information. Wilson executes the work required to move shipments forward.

During peak, the work that buries a logistics team is repetitive: asking carriers for quotes, following up on tenders, confirming pickups, chasing status and collecting documents. Wilson handles that work on each load:

  • Quoting and booking. Wilson requests quotes from the company's approved carriers, compares them on total cost and negotiates toward the company's rate targets within approval limits. Rates outside those limits go to the logistics team. Wilson tenders and books with written acceptance and a rate confirmation.
  • Pickups. Wilson schedules pickups and generates the bill of lading, packing slips and pallet labels for the booked load, so documents are ready when the freight is staged.
  • Tracking. Wilson tracks each load with the best source available for that carrier: carrier API or EDI, GPS or ELD data where the carrier shares it, the carrier's website by PRO number, and email or phone calls when nothing else is current.
  • Exceptions. When a pickup is missed, a carrier cancels or a load is delayed, Wilson contacts the carrier, tells the team and tells the customer if configured. It starts rebooking from the approved carrier list automatically within the company's rules, or after approval.
  • Documents and payment. Wilson requests and files PODs, audits each carrier invoice against the rate confirmation and POD, and pays carriers from the Wilson Wallet. Payments above the approval limits or outside the rules wait for a person.

Wilson books only carriers the company has approved. Cartage can suggest additional carrier capacity before peak, but the company approves each carrier before Wilson uses it. Wilson works across LTL, FTL, ocean, drayage, parcel and cross-border freight. It talks to carriers by email, API, EDI and phone where configured, updates the team in Slack, Microsoft Teams or email, and reaches customers by email or SMS where configured.

Control stays with the company. Teams start with assisted execution, set their own approval limits and let routine actions run automatically within those rules as the workflow is proven. Every message, confirmation and change is kept in the shipment's change history, which makes the after-peak review much easier. Wilson can also produce carrier-performance and lane-rate reports on request from the loads it runs.

Wilson replaces the TMS for freight execution and connects to the company's ERP. Wilson works with SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle, Infor, Epicor, Sage, Acumatica and other ERP environments, with the exact connection depending on the customer's data flow and scope.

Pricing

Wilson is free on Wilson's network: the shipper pays the freight rate and nothing on top. When a shipper keeps its own carriers, the fee is 2% to 0.5% of what Wilson pays them, falling with volume. There are no seat fees, no setup cost and no contract. Timing depends on scope: most teams start on a few lanes and expand from there.

FAQs

How do I get our logistics ready for peak season?

Build a weekly volume forecast with sales and production, share it with approved carriers to secure capacity, line up backup carriers, set dock hours, plan customer updates and agree on expedite rules, starting at least six weeks out. Wilson, by Cartage, an AI logistics agent, then handles quoting, booking, tracking and exceptions on each load during the rush.

How early should we start planning for peak season?

Start at least six weeks before the first peak week. If your lanes are hard to cover or your peak is long, start earlier, because carriers plan their own capacity weeks in advance.

What should a peak season forecast include?

Expected loads by week, lane, mode and equipment, based on last year's history and adjusted with input from sales and production. Mark uncertain orders separately so you can discuss them with carriers as possible surges.

How many backup carriers do we need per lane?

At least one, and two on lanes that matter most. Each backup should have rates, insurance and contacts on file, so it can take a tender the same day.

How do we avoid paying for too many expedites?

Set written rules before peak: who can approve, up to what amount, which orders qualify and who pays. Log every expedite with its reason and review the log weekly during peak.

Should we tell customers about delays before they ask?

Yes. A customer who hears about a delay before the delivery date can adjust their own plans. Report delays as soon as you know them, with a new expected date.

How do we keep the dock from becoming the bottleneck?

Compare the daily forecast with dock capacity, then add hours or shifts, spread pickup windows across the day, stage freight before trucks arrive and prepare documents in advance.

What should we measure during peak season?

Loads vs. forecast, tender acceptance, on-time pickup and delivery, expedites and their cost, detention, and delay notices sent before the delivery date. Review them weekly.

What should we do after peak season ends?

Hold a review within a week. Look at forecast accuracy, carrier performance, expedites and customer issues, and write down the changes for next year's countdown.

Can Wilson add carriers during peak season?

Wilson books only carriers the company has approved. Cartage can suggest additional carrier capacity, but the company approves each carrier before Wilson uses it.

Sources

Bring last year's peak season lanes and see how Wilson would quote, book and track them this year.