Transportation Logistics Software for Fleet Sizing

Associated Food Stores Reduces Transportation Asset Costs with TRST Logistics Optimization Software

 

Nearly all distribution companies focus on reducing transportation costs. But for Associated Food Stores, whose trucks travel nearly 8 million miles per year, transportation efficiency is mission critical.

 

Background

Associated Food Stores is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah and delivers groceries to 600 stores throughout the Midwest. Although they are primarily a co-op owned by their retailers, they also own 30 of the stores they deliver to. With their transportation expenses rising, they needed to plan better and analyze vehicle and driver requirements.

 

“We deliver over 400 routes a week and make around 1100 deliveries.  We needed a tool to model the utilization of our equipment and drivers,” says Glen Keysaw, Routing Supervisor. Search for such a tool led Associated Food Stores to Paradox.  After evaluating the tool with sample datasets Keysaw decided to license the software.  

 

Results

According to Glen, the results were impressive. “TRST has been instrumental in assisting us in minimizing the number of resources needed to run our day-to-day business.”

 

He also reports the following benefits:

• Visualizing peak time frames during the week where additional resources are needed

• Spreading out the peak volumes onto other days helps reduce required resources

• Determine resource requirements when taking on new business

By becoming a more efficient organization and reducing transportation expenses, Associated Food Stores has been able to pass some of their savings back to their customers.

  

TRST, a logistics optimization software, has provided more than just operational efficiency. “When taking on new business, we run the new routes through TRST to determine how many resources it would add to assist us in determining the cost of the new business and the freight rates,” Keysaw remarked.

 

Associated Food Stores uses TRST in conjunction with Roadnet Technologies’ Transportation Suite. TRST provides the flexibility of analyzing resource requirements independent of any routing system. “The changes made to model Over-the-Road and Local routes separately makes it so we can model both of our fleet in one pass,” Keysaw added “ I highly recommend TRST for companies looking to improve the management of and/or reduce the resources they use to deliver product.”