HelloFresh transport manager Elliot Jenkins reports that Truckstops has helped the company increase the scale of its in-house deliveries fourfold, even though it has only needed to put 50% more vans on the road.
HelloFresh is an online company that assembles all the main ingredients for a range of healthy and appetising meals, and delivers its recipe boxes to consumers across the country – along with instructions that walk customers methodically through the preparation and cooking process.
Having started by using carriers for its deliveries, HelloFresh is gradually building up its own delivery van fleet, and already uses this to deliver in London and the South West from a depot at Staines, Middlesex.
Shoppers are asked to place their weekly orders by midnight on Wednesday of the preceding week. The aim is then to group the orders into efficient delivery rounds using Truckstops, ensuring that van drivers can reach the maximum number of homes whilst travelling the minimum distance and spending the least time.
Initially the company used a basic online routing and scheduling system to handle this route planning, but Jenkins says it wasn't really ideal. “There was no user support, and the system wasn't scaleable, so it couldn't grow with us,” he explains.
Then the company discovered Truckstops. “I can honestly say Truckstops has transformed our scheduling process,” he says. “In the first week alone, we experienced a 40 per cent reduction in fuel costs.”
Truckstops evaluates the full list of deliveries for each day and the available vans, dividing calls into cost-efficient routes that meet all operating and legal requirements. Users can see the proposed routes displayed on a screen map, and can move calls interactively to different routes if required.
Truckstops outputs paper route sheets for each van and a manifest (list of calls), helping warehouse staff to load the boxes in the correct delivery order. In addition, Truckstops outputs call details in a spreadsheet form, and HelloFresh uses this to generate address labels for the boxes – helping to ensure that the labels always match the schedule.
Truckstops even helps drivers find their way to each call point. Prior to every shift, schedules are downloaded to the M-Nav in-cab computer in each van. This device, part of the Navman Wireless tracking system used by the company, presents deliveries to drivers in sequential order.