AmerCareRoyal is a leading manufacturer and distributor of disposable food packaging products. As the producer of a commodity product, its growth depends on the ability to distinguish itself as a differentiated fulfillment partner to its customers. That differentiation comes down to two things: cost and service. In 2020, AmerCareRoyal’s logistics team determined that improvements to its technology infrastructure could support growth by simultaneously lowering costs and improving service – two potentially conflicting goals. A new TMS was the answer, and after evaluating many, the company selected 3G.
When shipping high volumes of product, there are two primary ways of cutting costs: faster, more effective rate shopping and more efficient use of capacity. With 3G’s TMS, AmerCareRoyal achieved both. The logistics team was spending a significant portion of the day manually reaching out to brokers and carriers via email, to request quotes and book loads. By the time it was tendered, a single load could have 40 emails associated with it! The TMS, on the other hand, with its rate shopping automation, could handle that work behind the scenes, while the team addressed other issues in real-time.
The new TMS also allowed AmerCareRoyal to utilize capacity far more efficiently. Previously, when manually consolidating loads into multi-stop truckload combo shipments, the team completed about 150-200 per month. However, when automating that task within the TMS, that number has gone up to around 800! The speed and precision with which the TMS can make optimized consolidation suggestions is far beyond what any human can accomplish with guesswork and spreadsheets. Also a heavy user of LTL, the team has become so efficient in its shipment consolidations that it has reduced its monthly LTL shipments by around 400 (without reducing the amount of product shipped).
On the subject of reductions, AmerCareRoyal is also deeply invested in reducing its carbon footprint – as evidenced by its commitment to environmentally sustainable packaging products – and the TMS extends that to logistics operations, too. To put things in perspective load and route optimization led to an almost-20% reduction in miles driven, amounting to a monthly reduction of 1.5 million miles driven and 200,000 gallons of diesel burned. For those calculating carbon emissions reductions, that’s around 22 million KG less CO2 per year – the equivalent of taking 110 trucks off the road!
In addition to cost-reduction, the TMS has helped AmerCareRoyal maintain its commitment to superior customer service. Planning and executing a day’s shipments in the TMS can be done in a matter of a few hours, freeing the logistics team to respond more immediately to exceptions and handle them in real-time. Further testament to the convenience and user-friendliness of the TMS: access and training have been provided beyond the logistics department. Customer service, for example, will use it to access order information. No more querying individual carrier portals to track customers’ orders, reps will be able to use the customer’s order number and do it right from the TMS!
AmerCareRoyal’s shareholders have also benefited from the TMS. Not only has it set the company up for future growth, it has already made a noticeable improvement to bottom line results. With shipping as one of AmerCareRoyal’s largest expenses, the ability to cut costs by 6% (so far) gives the company a strong edge in confronting today’s supply chain uncertainties.
Typically, it is difficult for a supplier to grow by simultaneously pursuing cost reductions and service enhancements (as these goals tend to compete with one another) while also eyeing profitability. However, the TMS has given AmerCareRoyal the opportunity to do just that. And the company is just getting started! As a highly strategic function within the business, the logistics team is continuing to explore opportunities to solve systemic bottlenecks through the TMS, and constantly uncovering possibilities to do so – including Pacejet, 3G’s parcel management software, that was recently deployed alongside the TMS.
“At AmerCareRoyal, we think of ourselves as a non-commodity partner in a highly commoditized industry: price and service, not product, are our differentiators. So that means we really have to nail those, and that’s why we turned to 3G. 3G’s TMS has allowed us to pursue simultaneous cost-reduction and service-enhancement strategies, all the while making us a more environmentally friendly and profitable company. And the TMS has been the key. It’s made us a stronger team, and a stronger partner to our customers.”
Brad Clinard, Senior Director of Logistics