ShipStation welcomes SEKO’s LTL capabilities for its partner network

Late last month, Austin, Texas-based ShipStation, a provider of Web-based e-commerce shipping services, and Chicago-based SEKO Logistics, a 3PL and freight forwarder, rolled out a new services-focused collaboration.

At the heart of this collaboration is SEKO’s LTL Home Delivery Home Delivery Solution, a reliable and cost-effective nationwide last-mile and white glove option for the delivery of big and bulky e-commerce orders joining ShipStation’s partner network, in which SEKO will be ShipStation’s debut LTL services provider.

ShipStation said that this collaboration will allow shippers to leverage a shared truck to easily share products that are too heavy or too large to move via parcel, while also resulting in time and money savings.

“The delivery of oversized parcels is a benchmark for SEKO’s LTL Home Delivery solution - competing on price, but never on quality of service,” said Brian Bourke, Chief Growth Officer at SEKO Logistics, in a statement. “We’re excited to bring our LTL capabilities exclusively to the ShipStation platform to meet the increasing demand for merchants to be able to ship large items.”

And Krish Iyer, Head of Industry Relations and Strategic Partnerships at ShipStation, told LM that there were various drivers that led to this partnership with ShipStation.   

“In general, with the increase in online shopping (as noted, recent ShipStation data shows that 77% of surveyed consumers are shopping online more as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic), larger items that have traditionally been purchased in store are a part of this increase,” said Iyer. “So, retailers are now being presented with the challenge of fulfilling orders that are too large or heavy for a regular shipping service, and also may not require a full truckload, making their options few and expensive. With this new SEKO LTL integration, retailers can leverage a shared truck to easily ship products that are too large or too heavy to ship via parcel services, saving them (and their customers) money. In addition, the lines between a parcel and a larger, bulkier item have blurred; many shippers have a difficult time understanding the differences and/or how to cost-effectively ship these items, especially to residences.”

This has been in the works for some time, Iyer noted, adding the pandemic accelerated the need, as more consumers (and retailers) felt comfortable ordering and delivering big ticket items such as furniture and large electronics. 

“We have had a multi-faceted relationship for years with SEKO Logistics, ranging from international deliveries to fulfillment,” said Iyer. “Heavyweight shipping simply adds one more element to a strong relationship between our companies to provide a full suite of logistics solutions to brands and retailers, as well as their consumers.” 

When asked to describe the main benefits of this partnership for customers, Iyer explained

that parcel shipping can be challenging enough to understand for retailers/brands, especially SME (small to medium enterprises), coupled with adding heavyweight and LTL services to this complexity.

“In this case, however, it has been made easy as there is an easy-to-understand rate structure with aggressively discounted rates already inside of ShipStation,” he said. “In addition to general streamlining and savings, through this integration and partnership, customers will benefit from: efficient booking (in the ShipStation platform, users can transport deliveries on time with back-end tracking and reporting), nationwide coverage (users can ship anywhere in the US), cost-effective service (users can leverage the ShipStation Wallet to book order delivery), as well as enhanced communication and delivery experience (SEKO coordinates deliveries via a new delivery platform for more transparency for the customer).”