COST SAVINGS & SALES GROWTH CASE STUDY
Achieve Cost Savings on Freight Brokerage with Accelefrate® Integrated Logistics and Supply Chain Management Solutions
The transportation industry has faced many challenges in the last sixteen months while trying to keep up with the increasing demand and volume of freight, including a driver shortage and lack of available trucks on the road. As a result, less than truckload and truckload transportation costs have skyrocketed, leaving many food manufacturers unsatisfied with their current partnering 3PL company on service levels and price.
In 2017, one of our long time frozen pasta customers from the New York Metropolitan area that utilized RLS’s cold storage warehouses to carry their inventory also used another 3pl company to manage their transportation. During a business review, we uncovered supply chain inefficiencies that were costing them a lot of money in their transportation business. Because of this, we were able to present our Accelefrate® MTS program with KPI benchmarks that detailed significant savings.
Accelefrate® MTS is a holistic approach to solve the common pain points potential customers face with their current logistics and supply chain management provider. Accelefrate® Managed Transportation Solutions (MTS) Program is designed to save your frozen and refrigerated food business time and money on coordinating transportation to destinations nationwide such as food service companies and retail chains. Through this program, shippers gain a direct line of communication to RLS’ cold chain experts, our leading edge technology, and can decrease overhead costs of having to hire an inhouse logistics department.
According to John Gaudet, Chief Commercial Officer, RLS Logistics, “It’s not a knock on the 3PL company that customer was with; it’s that they didn’t have the breadth of cold chain solutions that we do. So as a result, they were shipping truckloads when they shouldn’t have been, and it was costly. What the customer needed was to manage better their outbound and inbound orders to use the most appropriate method of transportation, whether that was LTL, truckload, or continuous moves.”
After a thorough onsite and offsite analysis of the pasta maker’s operation, the RLS team identified ways to save the customer a significant amount on their annual outbound costs, primarily by assessing what orders should ship as LTL and which should ride as truckload and truckload with stop off. Additionally, inbound raw materials and packaging were converted to customer pick up instead of delivery. This created capacity by offering backhaul opportunities for carriers delivering to specific states.
RLS Logistics doubled the initially forecasted cost savings while maintaining the customer’s high service standards such as on time delivery. In addition, the frozen pasta manufacturer has since consolidated cold storage warehousing, distribution, and shuttle services with RLS Logistics, freeing them from the day to day management of their logistics.
“We’re fully integrated into their operation, handling their cold storage warehousing and inbound and outbound transportation. It allows them to concentrate on what they do best and have us as their team on the logistics side. Additionally, with our technology, we were able to create a dashboard that lets us know if we are winning or losing in real time,” said Gaudet.
The frozen pasta customer states, “A lot of companies claim to have a consolidation program; however, few have the scope of what RLS offers. Between their Accelefrate®and Walmart Consolidation Program, we have improved overall on time delivery performance to all of our key customers while reducing cost and inefficiency in our cold supply chain.”
Connect with our Business Development team today to eliminate wasted transportation spend, save time and money, and refocus your energy back on your core business.
