Thanks to DSC Logistics, a leading consumer products company’s transportation network was finally in good order—both freight and service under control. But, as usual, DSC didn’t stop there. We’re always looking for additional opportunities to help our customers increase efficiency and save money.

DSC analyzed the company’s shipping patterns and found numerous opportunities for additional savings. Armed with this knowledge, we looked at every shipment as a consolidation opportunity and consolidated parcel shipments into LTL shipments, LTL into TL shipments and LTL into intermodal, reducing the number of annual shipments and increasing the average size of each load. We examined the RAD date and lead times and shifted the transportation mode when prudent, still meeting delivery commitments but at a fraction of the previous cost.

Using our technology and analytical tools and models we were able to demonstrate that different modal choices and consolidation were also key to reducing the customer’s transportation costs. We worked with the company to understand order cycle times, knowing that the earlier the orders the better to consolidate. We built multi-stop loads to cube-out trailers, and consolidated LTL orders to build larger sized LTL deliveries when they weren’t quite large enough to go as TL shipments.

On one occasion, the customer in Japan could not accept anything less than the approximately 55 pallets they needed from Federalsburg, MD. DSC contacted the freight forwarder and learned that they were shipping a tote of vegetable oil to the same location in Japan. DSC and the freight forwarder requested two specialty truckload shipments of the goods to come back to Chicago where the goods were consolidated. By consolidating the very heavy/dense oil and the very light plastic dinnerware, DSC was able to get this shipment executed flawlessly and save the company approximately $30,000 in that single shipment. What did improved transportation network efficiency, consolidation and mode shifts mean to this leading consumer products company? An eight-10 percent reduction in their annual transportation costs. Cost savings, continuous analysis, fine tuning of your transportation network—all part of the value of using a third party logistics provider, especially one like DSC.