About Franklin Foods
Franklin Foods is the 3rd largest cream cheese manufacturer in the US. There are two facilities, one in Vermont and one in Arizona—each produces 1 million pounds of cream cheese on a weekly basis.
Doug Jenkins, the Transportation Manager, oversees both facilities and his team is responsible for scheduling 100+ Multi-Stop FTL shipments per month and managing their pricing contracts with carriers.
The Challenge
Pre-Portex, the inconsistency with how each facility built loads and requested quotes made it difficult for Doug to achieve his cost reduction and service level goals. While one facility primarily used email, the other used spreadsheets.
Doug knew technology could fix his transportation challenges because he’d previously used Bluejay, but he couldn’t justify the cost, high learning curve and complexity of traditional TMS systems for Franklin Foods’ 30-40 weekly loads.
Improving their performance to deliver to the customer’s Requested Delivery Date was a top goal for 2023/2024 in order to be seen as a reliable vendor. Plus, the lack of visibility into the loads that were being moved and the freight cost made it difficult for Doug’s team to build an accurate understanding of cost per pound across different lanes.
The Solution & Impact
Portex enabled Doug’s team to move away from emails and spreadsheets into a centralized communication system, Portex Chat. They were able to standardize how they manage quoting and shipments, resulting in a time savings of 4 hours and 30 minutes per day. Doug gained better visibility into the loads being moved and cost breakdowns, enabling him to make more strategic decisions and achieve his financial and service level goals.
“By using Portex we’ve been able to save 4 hours and 30 minutes per day and driven at least $20k+ in savings per month already.”
Portex has strengthened Franklin Foods’ partnerships with partner carriers and improved service by growing their core carrier program from 3 to 8 core carriers. This increased competition amongst partner carriers has driven $20k+ in savings per month already.
“Using the reports and analytics we’ve been able to make financial projections on shipping costs to management for the first time.”
Their team’s workflow has been transformed, and now they’re providing key insights that the rest of the organization is incorporating into their own processes. Customer service managers can troubleshoot logistic order questions, month-end activities can be more accurately predicted, and Doug’s team can make financial projections to management—which wasn’t possible before.
Compared to other systems that are pitched to him, his team has said they find Portex the most intuitive and quickest to onboard. It also helped increase team morale by lessening the chance of making mistakes, allowing them to focus on other aspects of their jobs, and helping them see where they could make a difference with efficiencies and cost savings.
