The goal of any fleet, particularly those with private or dedicated operations, is to maximize payload and decrease miles for customers. Routing technology can instantly analyze the options for building cost-saving loads and routes.
Penske Logistics recently added a feature to PLATO called Frequency Routing. The feature is used primarily to optimize the payloads for inbound freight to manufacturing facilities. Rather than calculate routes based solely on minimizing distance and time, the technology can determine, for example, if a route should pick up one-half a load, once per week from a location or two quarter-full loads, twice per week.
The choice may seem obvious, but many other factors are involved. How often will the truck be returning to an area? What other shipments and volumes on the route need to be included to meet the manufacturing schedule? The technology considers these and other variables.
Cardinal Logistics can use its technology to squeeze out the last “cube” of trailer capacity to save customers money. For a major cabinet manufacturer, Cardinal minimizes delivery costs by using DirectRoute to build full truckload shipments from the customer’s production facilities to its cross dock locations and then to build full truckload routes for final deliveries.
Cardinal uses DirectRoute in association with its order management system to make this “max cube” linehaul service possible. The final plan feeds into TMW Suite for dispatch.
