7 Strategies to Reduce Delays & Improve On-Time Delivery

Your reefer unit failed somewhere in Middle America, and now $800,000 worth of biologics will end up in the trash. You check your dashboard and see your semiconductor shipment hasn’t updated since Tuesday. Kroger is rejecting produce loads left and right because your carriers keep missing their delivery windows.

Every Ops manager—whether they’re shipping temperature-sensitive drugs to perishable foods to high-value electronics—faces the same mountain to climb: meeting a 97% on-time delivery rate while working with carriers that disappear, technology that spots problems only after they happen, and products that literally die if they’re late or get too hot.

The difference between teams hitting their OTIF targets and those wasting money on chargebacks comes down to the successful execution of a handful of strategies. Here we share seven that can help you move the needle.

Strategy 1: Use Live, Predictive ETAs Across Every Mode

When your carrier says “Tuesday at 2:00 p.m.,” what they really mean is Tuesday at 6:47 p.m.—after sitting through the I-95 pileup, the Long Beach port backup, or whatever weather system is currently destroying the Midwest. You’ve already scheduled dockworkers and cleared cold storage for 2:00 p.m., and now you have no choice but to adjust… while your biologics warm up in a trailer.

Live predictive ETAs fix these types of scenarios. They pull real traffic patterns, weather data, and terminal congestion to tell you when trucks actually arrive. Feed these into your TMS and everything shifts: dock crews show up when shipments do, cold storage opens at the right time, and customers get updates before calling to panic about their insulin order.

Track your carriers’ actual arrival times against their promises for one week. Many Ops teams find their “reliable” partners miss windows by three to six hours consistently. Once you see the real patterns, you can plan around them.

Strategy 2: Build Exception Management with Instant Alerts (& 24/7 Coverage)

Predictive ETAs tell you when trucks arrive, but they won’t tell you your reefer unit just died at 11:00 p.m. outside Nashville. Or that your $2 million semiconductor shipment has been sitting motionless at a truck stop since dinner. You’ll find out Monday morning when the rejection email lands and your on-time delivery rate craters.

The real-time shipment visibility gap kills most teams—who can’t reliably track 37% of their in-transit cargo, which means that problems compound overnight. That’s why you need to set up automatic alerts that fire off the second your critical thresholds break—whether that’s temperature breaches, stops over two hours, route deviations, or ETAs sliding past receiving windows.

Alerts alone won’t fix everything, though. Your night shift needs a playbook—and the authority to act. Who takes the 2:00 a.m. reefer failure call? Which backup carrier handles emergency pharma runs? What temperature reading triggers immediate reroute? 

Strategy 3: Optimize Carrier Selection Using Lane-Level History

Alerts help you catch problems, but picking the right carriers prevents them. Your carrier might nail your Dallas to Atlanta runs, yet blow Phoenix to Portland deliveries every single time. Ocean carriers hit 50-55% schedule reliability through 2024, but that average hides massive lane-by-lane variation.

Pull your actual performance data, and the patterns become obvious. Track each carrier’s on-time delivery percentage, temperature control, and exception rates for specific lanes. That refrigerated carrier crushing your Southeast routes might mishandle your Pacific Northwest shipments. Your electronics specialist that protects high-value cargo to Chicago might lose half the loads heading to Miami.

Build scorecards showing OTD rates, ETA variance, and claims by lane and carrier. Reallocate freight quarterly based on which carriers actually perform where. Stop giving Phoenix routes to carriers that fail there 40% of the time. Match carriers to the lanes where they consistently deliver on time.

Strategy 4: Attack Dwell & Detention with Appointments + Dock Scheduling

Even perfect carriers can’t fix what happens at your facilities. Drivers hit detention on 39% of their stops, sitting for hours while your pharma warms up and delivery windows evaporate. Your carrier arrived on time but is now stuck behind three other trucks, burning clock while your frozen seafood approaches temperature limits.

Kill the chaos with appointment scheduling. API-based systems let carriers book slots when they can actually show up, not when you hope they might. Digitize your gate check-in and BOL processing so drivers aren't standing around with paperwork while products spoil. Track how long each facility takes to load and unload, then work with the ones consistently holding trucks longer to streamline their processes and reduce detention times.

Monitor your facility dwell times weekly. Anything over 90 minutes for standard loads means that you’re creating your own on-time delivery problems. Cut manual scheduling calls, publish real capacity, and watch detention fees disappear—along with your late shipments.

Strategy 5: Share Visibility to Cut WISMO & Speed Decisions

Your facilities run smoother now, but you’re still drowning in customer calls about shipment status. Every “where is my order?” call wastes 15 minutes that your team could spend preventing actual delays. Meanwhile, your suppliers ship critical components blind, hoping they’ll arrive before your production line stops.

Give everyone real-time tracking links, and those calls disappear. Your pharma buyers can watch their temperature-controlled shipments move through every checkpoint themselves. Suppliers spot their own delays and warn you before components run short. And when customers see real updates instead of generic “in transit” messages, they stop calling in a panic about their insulin orders.

The trick is pushing updates before anyone asks. Send notifications when shipments leave, clear customs, or hit weather delays. Your electronics buyer already knows about that storm in Columbus, so they adjust their receiving schedule instead of calling you. Track which products generate the most status calls—then fix those visibility gaps first. 

Strategy 6: Instrument High-Risk Loads with IoT Condition + Location Sensors

Visibility helps, but knowing your vaccine shipment’s location alone won’t tell you it’s currently sitting at 85°F. Standard tracking can’t reveal that your electronics took a 15G impact during loading. For pharmaceuticals, fresh tuna, or semiconductor shipments where one temperature spike means total loss, you need sensors that track both location and condition.

IoT trackers give you the full picture. Temperature sensors alert you the moment your cold chain breaks—not when someone opens the trailer door eight hours later. Shock monitors tell you exactly when and where your servers got dropped. Light sensors confirm that nobody opened your high-value electronics container during that suspicious four-hour stop.

Place these trackers on anything that expires in the heat, spoils over time, or breaks from handling. When sensors detect problems, you are empowered to rescue shipments instead of writing them off. And most importantly, your on-time delivery rate stays intact.

Strategy 7: Stand Up a Lightweight Control Tower for Dynamic Rerouting

Finally, all these tools and sensors mean nothing if nobody’s watching them 24/7—and spotting it when problems hit.  

You need a control tower that pulls everything together: visibility feeds, weather data, port congestion reports, and every sensor alert flowing into one team that is empowered to act. When your pharma shipment starts warming near Atlanta, someone’s already on the phone with the nearest cold storage facility—rerouting before you lose the entire load. When ports back up, they’re shifting your electronics to rail before delays cascade.

The key is giving this team preapproved game plans and budgets. Which alternate routes open when primary lanes fail? Where does temperature-sensitive overflow go? Who authorizes emergency airfreight? Control towers that can reroute shipments before they breach protocols turn disasters into on-time deliveries.

Your Move: Stop Fighting Fires, Start Shipping On Time

The seven strategies above work because they attack the core problems wrecking your on-time delivery rates. Every day you’re dealing with carriers that treat ETAs like suggestions, reefers that fail when nobody’s watching, and high-value electronics that disappear for hours at truck stops where cargo theft runs rampant. Yet teams achieving 97% OTIF aren’t using special carriers or magic warehouses. They simply nail the basics.  

We built Tive specifically for Ops teams shipping high-stakes cargo that can’t afford to be damaged. Our trackers tell you exactly where your vaccines are, and whether they’re still cold enough to use. Our platform gives your customers real visibility so they stop calling about their semiconductor shipments. Our 24/7 monitoring team watches your alerts and acts while you’re asleep, rerouting that warming pharma load before it’s trash. We’ve helped teams rescue millions in temperature-sensitive drugs, eliminate WISMO calls, and turn their worst-performing lanes into their most reliable routes. 

So, if you’re ready to hit your on-time delivery targets, get started with Tive today.