Challenge
A private equity-owned mid-market trailer manufacturer was facing margin pressure from outbound freight costs. Their current load planning system was entirely manual and relied heavily on the planner’s experience and institutional knowledge, causing trailer utilization to be sub-optimal.
The company needed an outside perspective to rapidly diagnose the root cause and deliver a targeted solution without the cost and complexity of a full platform overhaul.
Approach
- Conducted rapid discovery to map current-state load planning process and identify root causes of utilization loss and freight cost leakage
- Determined the problem was a planning process and tool issue – data and logic needed to optimize loads already existed, but was all manually referenced
- Identified that a purpose-built optimization tool, rather than a broad platform replacement, was the right solution given the scope of the problem, the data that already existed, and the speed of value delivery the client required
- Leveraged AI and the client’s own operational expertise to rapidly develop a solution that encoded their expert stacking logic and consolidated fragmented Excel workbooks into a single connected load planning tool
- Deployed tool across all facilities within 8 weeks after starting with single-site pilot in week 6
Results
Reduced freight spend by 12% across all plants
Shortened load lock window from 21 to 3 days, returning 18 days of flexibility to planners
Increased trailer utilization from 65% to 80%
Delayed TMS decision, avoiding platform overhaul, multi-year implementation, and significant capital commitment