Background
RP Foods INC is a Hispanic Food & Drinks distributor and importer located in Dallas, TX with a variety of operations distributed in Southern California, Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Southern Texas. When we started working together, they used to face problems with their on-time deliveries, securing last minute capacity and shipment’s safety.
The main issues
At the moment we reached them, they had an issue with a broker they had that lost an entire shipment which never appeared due the previous broker’s safety procedures. Also, the pricing on the freight was too high as the COVID pandemic was starting to free the imports and the sea freight supply and demand was messing with the national freight rates. As importer, the company relied in the ports container drayage, which at the moment was very unpredictable making the operations very time-sensitive and the last-minute capacity to be required every single day at the best rate available in the market.
How to…
There were 4 main question: How to increase the coverage capacity? How to find high-quality vetted carriers at fair rates? How to increase on time deliveries to avoid the supply chain to be affected? And, how to make all the three questions reality at the same time we leverage operational costs?
Implementation
In August 2021, our journey began with one of their high priority lanes that required last minute capacity sometimes within 2 hours maximum to be picked-up once the shipper advised the load was ready to haul. The carrier’s relationships, driver’s-agents communication and high-quality safety procedures were key to a fast execution that allowed us to put a semi-truck within a couple hours every time need it, almost 15-20 times a week. A second case happened with an import operations from California, in the very pandemic-end volume outrage at the biggest scam levels in the California state that the trucking industry have ever experienced. These were a round of containers they needed to be transferred from their warehouse in California to their warehouse in Texas. We had to select every single carrier carefully, from their VIN on both trucks and trailer, to the driver’s license and make sure each warehouse verified this information prior every pick-up, and intense tracking operation once the loads were on route and verifying all documents once delivered to avoid any possibility of scam. We avoided more than 20 scams companies. None of the loads in almost an entire year were double brokered and if so, we caught them in action prior pick-up.
Results
We have been working for almost 4 years with RP Foods handling more than the 70% of their national freight satisfying more than 25 of their buyers. Our on-time delivery sets at 98,7% and our tender rejection today is equal to 0. We still being the preferred broker to haul domestic freight from this customer to the date.
Customer’s Feedback:
‘’I just want to highlight the extraordinary work that Andres Lopez does. I can assure you that we use Go To Truckers‘ service because of the excellent service he provides us. He always solves our problems, and his attitude and charisma are something difficult to find in the new generations. Take care of this great talent you have within your company!’’ – Transportation Manager at RP Foods INC
Anecdote
I can highlight an experience we had with a lane delivering in a major Distribution Center in Texas that applied charges for late deliveries, early deliveries (even if they were by minutes) past due dates, documentation etc. and we managed how to improve the operation in a way that our customer didn’t have to worry about any of the charges in a level that we only had a weekly discussion about how the lane was. The customer once said that it was the first time a transportation provider was so reliable that he didn’t had to worry at all about any of the procedures after sending a PO number and pick-up and delivery appointment.
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