Texas horticultural specialist Weatherford Farms has to dynamically route deliveries to grocery stores, interior plantscapers, garden centers and local florists throughout the Houston area by producing in minutes routes and schedules that save time and maximize vehicle loading. Facing different challenges, but with the same goals, is Central Freight Lines, the Waco, Texas-based for-hire common carrier. In the less-than-truckload operation, the ability to move information rapidly enables more effective decisions that lead to better customer service and more efficient operations.
These two operations are clearly different. Weatherford Farms has a fleet of delivery vehicles that service a 150-mi. radius of Houston. Central Freight Lines operates 1,600 tractors and 8,000 trailers from 77 terminals nationwide. What they have in common is that investments in technology are not only meeting their challenges, but paying dividends, as well.
“Manual planning was demanding and we were relying on the knowledge and experience of our drivers,” said Bridget Weatherford, co-owner of Weatherford Farms. “It was clear we could improve efficiencies significantly by using logistics software that is both flexible and has the sophistication to include delivery time constraints and the various sizes and shapes of the plants we carry.”
To meet its needs, Weatherford turned to Paragon Software Systems Inc., installing its Paragon Single Depot vehicle routing and scheduling solution. The configurable software includes functionality for daily route planning, strategic analysis and modeling, fixed route management, and delivery scheduling. “The Paragon software is easy to use,” Weatherford said. “It just requires us to import daily order spreadsheets into the software to create routes. The software produces accurate routes that allow for variation in orders and delivery times, even during the very busy holiday season when we have double the number of orders.”
At Central Freight Lines, an investment in information and communications technology is providing measurable benefits, as well. About one year ago, Central adopted Cheetah Freight SaaS, a Software-as-a-Service solution from Cheetah Software Systems Inc. The project also involved integrating data from Central Freight’s enterprise system with LTL/CIS and Traffic/CIS activity-based cost and lane analysis solutions from Transportation Costing Group.
The adoption of this comprehensive set of solutions, the LTL carrier reports, has resulted in an increase in productivity and cost savings totaling more than $1.5 million. Included are a 7% increase in bills per hour at cross dock facilities that comes from integrated pickup and delivery information used to build linehaul loads; a 5% to 10% decrease in miles per stop, improving vehicle utilization and cutting fuel costs; a 99.58% claims-free operation—up from about 93% prior to the implementation of the management solutions; and a decrease in communications costs by equipping drivers with GPS-enabled cell phones and negotiating a favorable data plan with a cellular service provider.
Central Freight also reports labor cost savings by consolidating dispatch operations at 22 of its 77 terminals. With the new technologies, freight management and dispatch activities at the “dark” locations are now handled from other terminals in the same region, enabling management and dispatch to take on other duties.
The technology investments at Weatherford Farms and Central Freight Lines, while addressing different needs in different types of transportation operations, have had a very positive impact on the ability of both operations to profitably provide outstanding service and reduce costs. In both cases, unmatched visibility into fleet operations is ensuring that these investments are paying off for the companies and their customers.
