Tarmac said its use of route planning and optimisation tools from Podfather was helping to increase third-party hauliers’ productivity and efficiency.
The Podfather logistics software plans, routes and reports on more than 30,000 deliveries a week and the company said it would boost consistency, cut unladen mileage and release additional customer service resources.
“Using Podfather, we can plan to a set of rules, regardless of personal preferences or geographical priorities, which allows us to operate across borders, allocating routes fairly and consistently,” said Ben Garner, logistics director at Tarmac.
“This is allowing us to transition from purely next day planning to more live, dynamic planning, which in turn, means our team can be more responsive and reactive to our customers, building relationships and having the capacity and tools to troubleshoot if required.”
Garner added: “This hasn’t necessarily been an easy process. We are dealing with experienced people and changing the way we do things.
“However, we are already seeing positive impacts on the business. We are able to evidence to our third-party hauliers a fairness of allocation, and we are increasing their productivity by improving the ratio of laden vs unladen mileage, by up to 10%, which has a direct impact on their bottom line.”
