3PL Solutions Built Around Your Freight
A Top 100 3PL Provider With One Point of Contact
If you're shipping freight on a regular basis, managing it all in-house or juggling a handful of carrier contacts eventually stops making sense. A 3PL, or third-party logistics provider, takes on that freight brokerage and supply chain management work for you, matching your shipments with the right carrier at the right rate instead of leaving your team to call around and hope someone has capacity. At Associated Logistics Group (ALG), we built our business around getting that match right, without the runaround.What Is a 3PL Solution?
A 3PL solution is outsourced support for the transportation side of your supply chain. Rather than owning trucks and hiring drivers yourself, you partner with a provider who arranges the shipping on your behalf, using a network of vetted carriers.
Most 3PLs, including ALG, are non-asset-based. That means we don't own trailers or employ drivers directly. Instead, we maintain relationships with a wide range of carriers across the country and match your freight with the carrier that fits your lane, timeline, and equipment needs. This is different from an asset-based carrier, which owns its own trucks and can only move freight where its own fleet operates.
The advantage of working with a 3PL service provider is flexibility. We're not limited by our own equipment or geography. If a carrier in our network doesn't have capacity for your shipment, we find one that does. For businesses shipping regularly across the 48 contiguous states, that kind of flexibility often means fewer delays and better rates than trying to manage a rotating list of carriers on your own.
What a 3PL Solution Can Cover for Your Business
3PL solutions aren't one-size-fits-all. Some shippers need help with a single mode of freight, while others want a partner who can handle everything from daily LTL shipments to the occasional oversized load. At ALG, we built our services around that range, so you can use as much or as little as your freight demands.
Freight Brokerage & Transportation
Freight Brokerage Services
Carrier sourcing, rate negotiation, and shipment management handled for you.
Specialized & Cross Border
Expedited Freight
Time critical shipping from sprinter vans to next flight out.
Heavy Haul
Oversize and overweight loads with permits and escorts handled.
Final Mile
Curbside to white glove delivery for big and bulky freight.
International Air & Ocean Freight
Global freight forwarding, FCL, LCL, and customs brokerage.
Managed & Custom Programs
Managed Transportation Services: Outsourcing your entire freight program, procurement, freight bill auditing, and performance reporting included, so it's never managed piece by piece.
Equipment Access Across Every Mode
Depending on your lane and load, ALG can put you in dry van, flatbed, step-deck, reefer, Conestoga, RGN, stretch RGN, lowboy, or other specialized trailers for truckload freight. For expedited or time critical shipments, that list extends to sprinter vans, cargo vans, box trucks, and straight trucks, along with team drive options when a load needs to keep moving around the clock. Heavy haul and over-dimensional freight gets matched with carriers who carry the right permits and can arrange escorts when the load calls for it. If your freight doesn't fit neatly into one category, that's a normal conversation to have with your ALG rep, not an exception.
The goal is to build the solution around what you're shipping, so the equipment and mode always match the load.
The Technology Behind Your 3PL Solution
Part of what makes 3PL work is the technology behind it, and this is an area where we've made a deliberate investment. Every carrier in our network is required to have API connectivity, which means you get real rates in real time instead of waiting on a callback or an email that shows up hours later.
Our Transportation Management System (TMS) gives you one place to request quotes, book shipments, and track freight from pickup to delivery, whether you're moving a single LTL pallet or running a full truckload program across multiple lanes. Customers using our Managed Transportation Services also get access to optional API integrations that connect our TMS directly with their own systems. No one has to manually re-enter data on either end.
None of this is meant to replace the people on your account. We use technology to remove the friction of quoting and tracking so your dedicated ALG contact can spend time on the parts of the relationship that actually need a person: solving problems, answering questions, and making calls when a lane gets tight.
Managed Transportation Services and BPO
Some businesses don't just need help booking freight. They need someone to run the freight program itself. That's what our Managed Transportation Services and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) options are built for.
Under a managed program, ALG takes on the day-to-day work of carrier procurement, freight bill auditing, spend analysis, and performance reporting. Your team isn't stuck buried in invoices or chasing down which carrier missed a pickup. You get a dedicated team that knows your freight and reports back on how the program is performing, rather than a single point of contact handling one shipment at a time.
This works well for businesses that want to lean on ALG's staff and technology to handle all or part of their logistics operations, freeing up internal resources to focus on growing revenue. It's also flexible by size. Whether you need support on one lane category or a full-scale operation across your supply chain, a managed program can be built around what you need.
3PL Solutions vs. Managing Carriers on Your Own
Some businesses handle their own freight for years before looking into a 3PL, and that's not a mistake. If you're shipping once or twice a month, building direct carrier relationships can work fine. The math changes once volume picks up.
When you manage carrier procurement in-house, you're responsible for finding capacity, negotiating rates, tracking compliance and insurance, and following up on every shipment yourself. That's manageable at low volume. At three or more shipments a week, it starts pulling time away from the parts of your business that grow revenue.
A 3PL solution consolidates all of that into one conversation with your ALG rep, instead of five or ten separate carrier relationships. There's also a scale advantage. Because we move freight for shippers across the country, we can often get better rates from carriers than a single business negotiating on its own. Carriers want consistent volume, and a 3PL brings that volume even when your individual shipment count is small.
How to Choose the Right 3PL Partner
Not every 3PL operates the same way, so it's worth knowing what to look for before signing on with one:
- Carrier vetting standards: Ask how carriers get into the network and what compliance checks they go through. A provider working with 90 or 100+ vetted carriers isn't the same as one that will book anyone who answers the phone.
- Pricing transparency: Look for straightforward rate structures without hidden fees buried in the fine print.
- Range of services: If your freight spans multiple modes, whether it's full truckload one week and reefer LTL the next, working with a provider who covers that range saves you from managing multiple vendors.
- Technology: API-connected rating and real tracking should be standard, not an upsell. Ask how quickly you can get a quote and how visibility works once your freight is moving.
- Support model: Find out if you'll have a dedicated contact or a rotating call center. This is often the biggest difference between providers that look similar on paper.
See how ALG stacks up on the criteria above before you commit to a provider.
Core Benefits of Working With ALG
The specifics vary by business, but most shippers who move to our 3PL solution see the same benefits:
- Cost savings: Carrier rates are often better when they're backed by the volume ALG brings to the table, even on smaller shipments.
- Broader carrier access: The trucking industry is fragmented, with hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized carriers spread across the country. We give you one line into that market instead of trying to build it lane by lane.
- Flexibility without hiring: Freight needs shift with the season, with demand, and with growth. Outsourcing carrier procurement lets you scale up or down without adding headcount to manage it.
- A dedicated contact who answers the phone: Every ALG customer works with a real person based in the U.S. who knows their business.
- Fewer gaps in coverage: If you handle most of your freight in-house but have a lane or two that's hard to fill, we can pick up exactly where your current setup falls short.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to Work With ALG?
Create an account today and let's get your product moving.