Ultra Shipping Case Studies

Case 1: Development and implementation of UltraShip

At the end of 1999, Ultra was given the opportunity to implement a TMS solution for one of our customers. Within six months, we developed a system that connected the corporate traffic department with 12 plants, 160 carriers, 16 repair facilities, and 234 customer locations. We also trained all their carriers on the new system.

The customer now seamlessly handles delivery confirmation with e-mail confirmation, has eliminated lost paperwork, sped up receivables, and easily manages accounts payable, direct carrier invoicing, and reconciliation reports.

Case 2: National Discount Chain Direct to Store Deliveries

Early in 2001, Ultra Logistics was given the task by a client of consolidating shipments from five vendors with eight locations, and delivering display materials to 2,100 stores across the United States, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam.

Ultra secured warehouse space in three major US cities, where we consolidated the freight and organized shipments based on transit time. This was necessary to meet strict delivery deadlines, as construction crews were scheduled to construct the displays upon arrival at the store. Using a custom routing package, we chose locations that minimized miles traveled and allowed us to ship as multi-stop truckloads instead of LTL shipments.

The customer was given access to real-time web-based reports, and could access the status of any shipment at any time. During a three month period, we oversaw the delivery of 37,020 pieces of freight - and only made one stop at each of the 2067 stores we delivered to!

In the process we developed the rollout manager, an application that has helped us to manage 20 subsequent rollouts of various sizes and to make over 20,000 direct-to-store deliveries of more than 75,000 pieces.