Hackbarth Delivery Service

Kelly Picard has been in the delivery business since 1994, and in her current role, as CEO of Hackbarth Delivery Service, is responsible for the strategy, leadership, growth and management of the company. She has held a variety of leadership positions, including VP of Sales & COO, in addition to working in all facets of the operations, from driver to dispatcher to terminal manager. During her tenure with Hackbarth, she helped orchestrate the firm’s evolution from an employee-based bank courier to that of a final mile, routed distribution and dedicated line haul carrier, growing the business from 4 locations to 40. She has been active in the CLDA for many years and has served on the board since 2014.

Picard received her MBA from The Ohio State University with a concentration in leadership and a BA in International Politics and Spanish from Louisiana State University. In addition to industry organizations, Kelly has coached her daughters’ volleyball teams and is active in local charitable and community organizations.

Please tell us about the freight pay and audit system from the perspective of the carrier.

Shippers usually employ the freight pay and audit system to streamline their spend management for transportation and all other services. However, carriers implement a freight pay and audit system to resolve underpayment issues. At Hackbarth, we have developed our own internal audit where we still create invoices for the customer. Based on the data we receive from clients related to orders or shipments, we create a pricing table associated with those deliveries and generate an invoice for shippers. The clients then send us the statement that their freight and audit system generates along with the payment. We then create a report internally within our system where we compare our and clients’ statement. This helps us find discrepancies in both the statements and inform our clients. We then get the data corrected to ensure consistency in the report. In essence, we have to build our own database to keep the contract rates to match it up with the payment and data that clients send and flag up any exceptions in the report.

To have a sound freight pay and audit process, you must have accurate data going into the system

Could you tell us about any instance and issue you have faced regarding the freight pay and audit and how you resolved it?

In our organization, we have built a reconciliation or recon process to match our and clients’ reports. Clients push freight pay and audit information weekly that we compare with our system’s data. However, when shippers decide to change freight pay and audit providers and the fields aren’t the same, it forces us to update or sometimes rebuild the databases that we use to match. If shippers decide to move fields or add a data point, we also need to mimic that on our side to ensure we’re reconciling properly. It is always about reconciling the invoice as it ensures we don’t miss out on any payment. There were many instances when we were shortpaid or paid twice for the same delivery due to the glitch in clients’ systems. Owing to our process, we could point that out and inform the clients’ regarding the same, driving value for both customers and ourselves.

How do you envision the future of freight pay and audit space in the coming years, and what would be your piece of advice to your fellow colleagues or aspiring professionals in this field?

With the evolving technology, our systems and processes also change. In the future, we will be using more advanced and streamlined processes and systems. Most of the larger shippers already have their own freight pay and audit system, and the rest use third-party vendor services. As the market becomes more competitive, the cost of freight pay and audit services will reduce for shippers. Consequently, more midsized and small shippers will adopt these systems.

My sole advice is to ensure feeding the correct data to achieve the right and value-driven outcomes. At the end of the day, to have a sound freight pay and audit process, you must have accurate data going into the system, to begin with.