Challenge

Intera ships a wide variety of materials, each with different loading, transit, and unloading requirements. Their highest volume material is also the most labor intensive. These loads require very specialized handling, in addition to blind pick and delivery, with the drivers needing to weigh both light and heavy at 3rd party, certified scales. The certified shipping weights must then be transferred to separate BOL’s for delivery and invoicing. The use of a number of brokers and asset-based carriers introduced multiple points of potential failure, added complexity, and yielded costly weight discrepancies and time-consuming claims on a regular basis. Restrictive delivery policies at their largest vendor required appointments set well in advance of the ship date, which predictably led to missed appointments with no notice to the receiver.

Solution

Tumalo Creek has been partnering with Intera since their inception, and have grown to become their primary logistics provider. We made ourselves very familiar with the service issues they were experiencing, and implemented a number of track and trace policies and load “punch lists” to mitigate the effects of a complex data reporting requirement. Our operations team focused their initial efforts on building a strong, dedicated carrier base that understood and complied with the strict prerequisites attached to each load. We then created company protocols, specific to Intera, for each load that include shipper/receiver communication, carrier receipt and use of alternate BOL’s, and verbal confirmation of weighing both empty and loaded. We have established strong relationships with their primary vendors, and been given access to their complex scheduling systems to ensure that we can take full advantage of the available inbound deliveries so we can work with Intera’s buyers to maximize their volume of sold material.