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Part 5 of 7 · Damaged goods claimer series ~5 min read

What the claims add up to

Claims recover some of the money. The aggregate record is what stops the damage happening, and it is worth considerably more than the claims are.

Key takeaways

  • Group by carrier, by route, by packaging type, and by which supplier packed it.
  • The packaging grouping usually finds the largest single cause.
  • Include logged-but-not-filed damage in the analysis; it is most of the volume.
  • Report damage rate per hundred consignments, not raw counts.
  • The output is usually a packaging change or a route change, not a carrier change.

Four groupings

Three ways damage records are grouped and what they usually showThree boxes stacked on the left. By carrier: rate per hundred consignments, labelled the obvious one. By route or depot: often one transfer point, labelled surprisingly sharp. By packaging: how the supplier packed it, labelled usually the largest. All three converge on A quarterly view with filed and logged damage together, and that leads down to Usually a packaging fix, cheaper than the claims. A note says changing carrier is the response people reach for and rarely the one that helps.By carrierrate per 100 consignmentsthe obvious oneBy route or depotoften one transfer pointsurprisingly sharpBy packaginghow the supplier packed itusually the largestA quarterly viewfiled and logged togetherUsually a packaging fixcheaper than the claimsChanging carrier is the response people reach for and rarely the one that helps.
Fig 1. The groupings and where they lead. The packaging lane is the one that produces a fix rather than a negotiation.
  • Machine learning
  • Analytics
  • Front-end & mobile

Why packaging wins

Carriers handle a great many consignments and their damage rates are broadly similar, because they are all doing roughly the same thing with roughly the same equipment. What differs enormously is how well things are packed, and that is largely determined by the supplier who packed them.

A product that arrives damaged from one supplier and never from another, shipped by the same carrier on the same route, is a packaging finding with a name attached. That conversation — with the supplier, about corner protection or a stronger carton — is usually cheap and permanent, where a carrier negotiation is neither.

Rates, not counts

Two carriers compared by damage count and by damage rateA bar chart with four bars. Two series: damaged consignments as a count in orange, and damaged per hundred consignments in red. Carrier A has fourteen damaged consignments; Carrier B has nine. Expressed as a rate, Carrier A is one point two per hundred and Carrier B is four point five per hundred. A note says A has more incidents and a quarter of the rate, so counts point at the wrong carrier.05101520~14Carrier A~9Carrier B~1.2Carrier A, per 100~4.5Carrier B, per 100Damaged consignments, countDamaged per 100 consignmentsA has more incidents and a quarter of the rate. Counts point at the wrong carrier.
Fig 2. The same two carriers by count and by rate. Reporting counts systematically blames whoever you use the most.

This is a small reporting decision with a real consequence, because the carrier you use most will always have the most incidents and will always look worst on a count. Several carrier relationships have been damaged by a chart that was arithmetic rather than evidence.

Include the logged ones

Damage that was recorded but not claimed is most of the volume, and leaving it out of the analysis means the pattern report describes only the expensive incidents. The cheap ones are where the frequency signal lives.

It also keeps the report honest about the total: “£4,100 claimed, £1,900 recovered, and a further £2,600 of damage logged and not claimed” describes the actual cost of damage, where the claim figures alone describe about a third of it.

What the report says

The quarterly page

  • Damage recorded: 41 consignments, total value £6,700.
  • Claimed: 18, value £4,100. Recovered: £1,900 so far, 3 still open.
  • Not claimed: 23, value £2,600, mostly below the cap threshold.
  • Largest cause: one supplier’s cartons on one product — 11 incidents, £2,900.
  • By carrier, per 100 consignments: A 1.2, B 4.5, C 0.9.
  • Deadlines missed: 2, value £480. Both concealed damage found late.

The fourth line is what the system is for. Eleven incidents on one product from one supplier is a specific, fixable thing worth almost three thousand pounds a quarter, and it is invisible without an aggregate view of individually forgettable events.

The last line is the honest one. Missed deadlines are process failures, they have a value, and putting them in the same report as the recoveries is what keeps the process from quietly degrading.

The response is rarely a new carrier

Switching carrier is disruptive, the replacement’s damage rate is unknown until you have a year of data, and the cause was frequently not the carrier. The findings that reliably pay are packaging changes, declaring value on the light expensive consignments, and occasionally avoiding one depot.

Next: what all of this costs to run.

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