Company Background
Established in 1995 in the Salinas Valley of California, Taylor Farms set out to become North America’s favorite maker of salads and healthy fresh foods. Today, it is the world’s top producer of fresh-cut produce, providing fruits and vegetables to many of the largest supermarket chains and restaurants in the U.S., including Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Subway, Pizza Hut, Safeway and Kroger.
The Business Need
TCA shipping clerks managed dock scheduling through shared Excel sheets. Dockworkers would often take longer than anticipated to load trucks or late carrier arrivals would create massive backlogs in the shipping schedule. These disruptions often resulted in detention costs of up to $75 per hour, or worse, and reduced TCA’s ability to competitively buy capacity, despite sizeable transportation spend.
Notable challenges, included:
- Manual dock scheduling process
- Long truck loading times
- High, unnecessary detention costs
- Sub-optimal carrier experience
- Non-competitive capacity rates
The Solution
TCA needed to efficiently move trucks in and out of its docks, so Redwood collaborated with the company to build a custom-built, proprietary application that would manage dock scheduling and slot appointment times and automatically determine the amount of time it takes to load a truck. The tool was developed to perform custom calculation based off of any specified rules - calculating appointment timing from a count of unique SKUs and total quantity within an order. The tool’s underlying reporting engine provides instant visibility to daily productivity and shipping trends.
The Result
The dock scheduling solution has helped enable TCA to not only save money on detention fees but also receive preferential pricing from satisfied carriers. The tool has also increased productivity for TCA as every truck loaded and departed directly increases Taylor’s top-line revenue. By shipping even one additional load each day, TCA will realize more than a tenfold ROI in a single year.
Are you in need of custom dock solutions?
Contact a Redwood specialist to learn how we can help optimize your operations.
