Delivery Co. cuts fleet mileage by 25% and achieves major cost and environmental savings with Optrak's vehicle routing software

The Delivery Co. is the UK logistics operating company for the PaperlinX Group providing a dedicated in-house logistics service for its three UK Merchants. The Optrak vehicle routing software has been used on a consolidation and rationalisation project for The Robert Horne Group, The Paper Company and the Howard Smith Paper Group and Delivery Co. has cut the kilometres travelled by the group fleet by 25%.

John Ball, Director, Delivery Co. said, "The Robert Horne Group had been successfully using Optrak for 14 years and this experience and the established relationship with Optrak was the perfect base for the Delivery Co. development. Optrak has enabled us to reduce our vehicle fleet size by 10%, make significant cost savings and substantially reduce our impact on the environment. Optrak is an essential element in the regional consolidation process and has been integral to the success of the Delivery Co. operations."

Delivery Co. has adopted Optrak's vehicle routing solution for an enterprise wide deployment and in the process adopted best practice, eliminated duplication, and improved overall resource utilisation. "As the three logistics operations evolved, it was clear that manual routing would not achieve the service levels required by the business. Optrak gives us greater accuracy and more consistent reliability which is vital to retaining our customers. It has also eliminated the risks involved in manual routing and improved the visibility of our service levels," said Ball.

Delivery Co. and Optrak achieve impressive results

The roll-out of Delivery Co. is a three-year program based on a regional migration process that started in November 2006 and is on schedule to be completed later this year, at which point the Delivery Co. will be responsible for the management of more 1.5m square feet of warehousing, a distribution fleet of more than 400 vehicles completing 5,000 deliveries each day, totalling more that 2,000 tonnes of daily delivered product.

Delivery Co. benchmarks a number of KPIs before each Optrak implementation. This has shown a consistent reduction in the vehicle fleet size of at least 10% with resources being redeployed within the organisation. Other savings have also been made through rationalising the number of distribution sites.

Toby Marchant, CEO PaperlinX Europe adds, "Developing superior strategic alliances is a key goal for the company and our partnership with Optrak has enabled us to generate significant environmental benefits and energy reductions, which was one of the aims of the Delivery Co. when it was established."