Merit Foods recently “tamed the chaos” in its food distribution business by moving from its old manual routing routes to advanced technology from DispatchTrack, which named the company its “Hero Customer” for January.
With over 600 customers in the Tucson, Arizona, area, Merit is a third-generation, family-owned broadline distributor that also offers specialty services, including custom cut meat and poultry processed in their 40,000-sq.-ft. warehouse. To keep routes running smoothly—and overcome the daily hurdles like last-minute orders, special requests, traffic, and backhauls—Merit turned to DispatchTrack’s innovative AI-powered route planning, and extensive team communication features.
The move solved many of Merit’s distribution challenges, and helped revolutionize internal processes, the company reported.
“DispatchTrack has definitely made things less chaotic,” Bailey Buick, Merit marketing manager, said in a news release. “Generating routes, getting feedback from drivers, and tracking deliveries in real time are so much easier and straightforward than they were before.”
Precision planning and effective execution
Because of its advanced algorithms and machine learning, DispatchTrack generates routes that are 98% accurate, ensuring drivers can reliably hit customer time windows, DispatchTrack said. For a chef waiting for tomatoes to prep lunch salads or a supermarket whose paper goods aisle is running short, being able to call in a late order and have deliveries consistently show up on time is critical.
DispatchTrack’s single-screen dashboard and delivery team mobile apps give Merit unprecedented granular visibility into every route, truck, and delivery in real time. Now, everyone from the dispatchers to the sales team can see each order in real time, which means team members don’t have to make a phone call—and interrupt a driver—to get up-to-the-minute delivery ETAs. Feedback from drivers is cycled back into the algorithm so the routes get even more efficient over time.
“When changing planning processes, the temptation is to take measured, incremental steps,” DispatchTrack concluded. “But Merit’s forward-thinking decision to implement DispatchTrack’s more advanced features is helping decrease costs and delight customers who’ve relied on the company’s dedication to excellent service for generations.”
