The sennder team spoke with Lorena Cruz, transport manager, and Jesús Fernández, founder, from Spanish-based carrier Transade Logística SL. In this blog, we discuss how Transade Logistica SL operates in the fast-paced, and sometimes unpredictable, world of overland freight shipping in the Iberian Peninsula, and how working with sennder helps them to lock in regularly recurring loads.
A people-focused transport company
Jesús Fernández started Transade Logística SL 30 years ago. Straightaway, he recognized the importance of having a strong team. Transade now has 50 employees – including seven office staff and more than 40 truck drivers – and operates 25 trucks on national and international routes.
"I created this company by working closely with all of our employees. Without them, it would not have been done," said Fernández.
Fernández’s people-first way of thinking has become a key part of Transade’s business model. Transport manager, Lorena Cruz, suggests that the most important part of her job is taking care of her truck drivers.
“I like to get my job done, so they are happy,” says Cruz. “I believe that happy people work much better.”
“It’s really important to remember that we all live because of the drivers,” says Fernández. “They are the key players.”
Transade has regularly carried sennder loads since 2020
Transade officially joined forces with sennder in March 2020, taking on a regular shipping lane in Spain. Before then, Transade had taken occasional sennder loads, transporting cargo from Bilbao to Madrid. Having proved the quality of their service, Transade was asked about providing a dedicated truck to cover a lane on a regular basis.
Shortly thereafter, they provided a refrigerated truck on a similar lane. From then on, Transade has maintained two regular lanes, in addition to taking sporadic loads in Spain when they have available capacity.
To date, Transade has completed 920 loads with sennder across 21 different lanes with eight of our partnered shippers.
For Transade, the biggest benefit of working with sennder is gaining access to reliable, repeating orders on lanes that suit their business. For sennder, Transade offers regular capacity on important lanes in the Iberian Peninsula.
Shipping sennder loads helps to reduce office work
For Cruz, working with sennder helps to save her time and effort, because orders are easily managed online eliminating the need for paper.
Cruz starts her work early in the morning when shipper clients start to make requests. She knows how many trucks and drivers Transade has available on a given day, and she meticulously works to find loads and return loads for all of them.
“Before I search in a marketplace and work with people I've never dealt with before, I talk to the clients I'm more comfortable with,” Cruz says. In this sense, accepting sennder loads is a no-brainer, as she knows that they are reliable, and she has access to sennder’s online tools and support team.
“Working with sennder on a regular basis has been quite comfortable,” says Cruz. “When any problems have come up, sennder’s team has responded really well.”
The digital carrier platform, orcas, sets sennder apart
“The orcas application makes working with sennder different. Other clients just email me and that’s it,” says Cruz.
Cruz and her team log into orcas to accept and track their sennder loads, manage the trucks and drivers that are assigned to those shipments, and submit documents and collect pay for their completed deliveries.
“We use orcas on a daily basis,” says Cruz. “We have two daily lanes with sennder, as well as additional lanes which are sent by my colleagues on a daily or weekly basis. When it comes to sennder orders, I accept them all.”
Thanks to the order planning and fleet management tools in orcas, Cruz knows that the sennder orders she is offered have already been tailored to fit the capacity that she has available. This makes bidding on and accepting loads as simple as possible, and saves her the work of double-checking every order against other Excel sheets and calendars.
Additionally, once sennder loads are completed, proof-of-delivery (POD) documents can be immediately uploaded online. With sennder automatically preparing and sending invoices on her behalf, Cruz gains a bit of extra time that she can use to support the drivers, seek out other loads, or take care of back-end duties.
Trucking on into the future
Transade has proven itself as a reliable carrier with regular capacity for sennder on the Iberian Peninsula, and in turn, Transade has seen how it benefits from sennder’s regular loads and online tools.
“In order to expand our collaboration, we are currently looking into regular exports from Madrid to France,” says Fernández_._
sennder is happy to continue to support and work with Transade in the coming years, as the company continues to grow, and spread their reach to more international lanes.
Learn more about becoming a sennder carrier HERE.