Cheetah Software Services Inc., a software-as-a-service (SaaS) transportation logistics solutions provider, announced that Central Freight Lines has implemented the Cheetah Freight solution. Central Freight, a less-than-truckload carrier servicing roughly the central third of the United States, says it now is using Cheetah Freight to increase efficiency, make more stops in fewer miles, handle more freight tonnage with fewer people, and gain real-time visibility into every LTL shipment.
Central Freight says it is focused on dramatically improving the visibility of drivers and deliveries, while increasing the timeliness and effectiveness of communications between drivers, dispatchers, customer service reps and customers. In the future, Central Freight says it will use Cheetah Freight’s advanced route and dispatch optimization to reduce the miles driven and fuel used in delivering more freight.
“Our goals for implementing the Cheetah Freight solution are to intelligently inject technology into our dispatch management process in order to provide real-time shipment status information to our customers, provide improved decision-making tools to our P&D dispatchers, and improve the outbound-load planning process,” says Mark Stein, director of operations services at Central Freight Lines, based in Waco, Texas. “By doing so at this time, we are choosing to make a significant investment in our future that will pay dividends for many years to come.”
According to the companies, while many systems can require six to 12 months to implement, Cheetah Freight was operational in less than 90 days. Central Freight says it already has begun to enjoy unmatched visibility into fleet operations via real-time GPS tracking and affordable Java-enabled cell phones; dispatcher and customer service representative efficiency has been increased dramatically with the improvements in visibility and communications, via better information on the current and predicted location of drivers and freight.
Cheetah Freight says it provides Central Freight’s dispatchers with three primary advantages: First, the solution provides real-time pickup-and-delivery status information that previously was unavailable; second, dispatchers now can make decisions more efficiently, on the fly, regarding the best drivers to service on-demand pickups; and third, Central Freight now can gather information on pickup-and-delivery status and integrate it into their backend systems immediately for processing, rather than delaying until the end of the day.
“As a result of implementing the Cheetah Freight solution, we are now able to provide more accurate driver ETAs and real-time delivery status information to our customers on demand,” Stein says. “This same information combined with real-time driver locations has helped improve the decision-making ability of our dispatchers, resulting in improved service and P&D productivity.”
Central Freight says customers benefit by receiving instant access to better information on delivery and pickup status, knowing not only where a shipment has been but also where it is going, when it will arrive, and when the recipient has signed for it – all in real time; overall, this enhanced customer visibility provides the carrier with a significant competitive advantage.
“With Cheetah, everyone – dispatchers, customer service reps, customer employees – enjoy visibility into deliveries and pickups,” says Stephan Karczag, vice president of sales and marketing for Cheetah, based in Westlake Village, Calif. “They know where a driver has been, where he’s going, and when he’ll get there. This visibility helps Cheetah customers tremendously in today’s troubled economic times. Just one example – knowing where a driver is allows a dispatcher to quickly determine the most efficient routes and update them, on the fly, in real time. This makes significant reductions in the miles driven and, thus, in the amount of fuel that’s used.”
