In 1837, candlemaker William Procter and soapmaker James Gamble founded Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio. P&G now ranks among the world’s largest multinational consumer goods companies and has a market capitalization of nearly $400 billion.
Honored for supply chain leadership, P&G was again affirmed as a supply chain “master” in 2024, one of only four companies to achieve the Gartner Supply Chain Master Award. P&G attained top-five composite scores for at least seven of the past ten years, demonstrating a long-term investment in excellence and a commitment to strengthen and optimize the supply chain.
In 2019, P&G became one of the largest and oldest corporations in American history to launch a private truck fleet from scratch. “Our own private fleet exemplifies a strong commitment to innovative solutions and ongoing operational excellence,” said Kelsey Lanier, P&G’s North American private fleet director.
Lanier is a 12-year company veteran who joined P&G directly after college, where she earned an industrial engineering degree and MBA from the University of Missouri. She is a National Private Truck Council Institute Board of Governors member.
For more than 180 years, according to Lanier, P&G depended entirely on outside carriers for transportation services with overall good results. Company leadership did not see the need for or want a private fleet to have a role in corporate transportation.
See also: NPTC's National Safety Conference helps fleets meet challenges
Things changed in 2017 and 2018. “The freight market was not pretty,” Lanier said. “Truck capacity demand exceeded supply, and some shipments could not be guaranteed at any price. As a shipper being dependent on the outside truck carrier world, we felt a degree of capacity vulnerability not previously known. This led to a reassessment of the private fleet.”
Could the fleet deliver better control of capacity, costs, and service and, in the process, gain a competitive advantage? The answer was yes.
The fleet began with a pilot of 12 trucks and three lanes. “Our first truck rolled Sept. 25, 2019,” Lanier recalled. “Designed to handle the highest priority customer and intersite freight, the fleet in five years has grown from two fleet staff professionals to 18 and nearly 400 trucks, 800 drivers, and 2,500 trailers. The fleet delivers approximately 22% of our outbound finished products and less than 1% inbound. We see opportunities ahead to grow in both directions and continue to deliver value to P&G.”
P&G’s decision to use outside expertise was significant in the fleet’s development. “We currently lease all drivers and equipment,” Lanier said. “Private fleet specialist and former NPTC volunteer leader Jacob Klingbeil, CTP, was a co-founder of our private fleet. Jacob hired me and was a great mentor. He brought to P&G more than two decades of experience with a Fortune 25 company successfully running a private fleet with a similar go-to-market model.”
Quality drivers define the fleet’s success. “Our people are our greatest asset. We maintain our driver-preferred design, with consistent routes that enable drivers to be home after every trip. Our fleet continues to learn and improve,” Lanier said.
She added that the safety culture is the most critical part of the fleet—over profit and costs. Safety is more than a core value—zero accidents, incidents, and injuries is P&G’s goal. “One of the most impactful technologies P&G uses are the four cameras per truck,” she said. “The videos and data feedback collected allow our partners to coach drivers and make a positive difference in overall driver performance and fleet safety.”
P&G’s fleet won a 2022 Safety Award at the NPTC Annual Conference.
Looking ahead, Lanier sees managing exponential growth as the biggest challenge. “We feel positive about the continued success and continue to prioritize making it sustainable long-term. The fleet is a perfect playground to test and learn. The NPTC Benchmarking Survey Report gives us a great resource to measure performance against industry standards.”
