Industry: Express Delivery and Courier Services

The Situation: Prior to implementing the Cheetah Delivery™ system, JS Logistics of Saint Louis, Missouri, used radio transmissions and phone calls to ensure delivery. The company struggled to provide customers with accurate ETA’s. Expansion was impeded by the need to open local offices and hire more dispatchers in target markets. This made expansion difficult due to curtailed margins.

The Cheetah Solution: JS Logistics spent two years searching for the ideal system before selecting the Cheetah Delivery route optimization and dispatch application.

The Results:  JS now efficiently handles twice as much business with half the dispatching staff. The company can inexpensively expand operations to other major markets while increasing margins. Costs are about 20 to 30 percent lower than those of competitors as dispatching is centralized in St. Louis.

“We used to have 10 dispatchers and several coordinators struggling with 3000 deliveries. The system was manual, and drivers would forget what they were supposed to pick up so we had a lot of delivery problems.

"We don't have one one-hundredth of the problems we used to have with our drivers showing up to collect packages and forgetting who they were supposed to pick up for, what they were supposed to pick up, the number of boxes, where they were going. Every time a courier shows up for a pickup now, he has 100 percent of the delivery information he needs to be successful.

"My operations department went from 10 dispatchers to five, and I was able to increase my volume from 3,000 deliveries a day to about 7,000 deliveries. By utilizing Cheetah technology, we are able to be a very low cost provider and still make our margin.”

— John Cochran, President of JS Logistics

Cheetah System Helps JS Logistics Expand Past 7000 Deliveries Per Day — with Half the Dispatch Staff

The three transportation companies that comprise St. Louis-based JS Logistics have combined annual revenues of $25 million. JS Express provides on-demand and scheduled delivery services primarily in Missouri, Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. JS Trucking conducts local and national time-critical freight delivery. JS Warehousing provides storage and distribution services. JS employs about 500 drivers, roughly half of whom operate in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Prior to the adoption of Cheetah Delivery, Customer Service Reps (CSR’s) entered new orders into a proprietary system, which were routed to a ticket printer. Each dispatcher was assigned a specific metropolitan area. Dispatchers read the ticket information to the appropriate drivers. This manual mode of operation initially resulted in rapid expansion. But once the company reached 3,000 deliveries per day, inefficiency became rampant. It proved difficult to expand beyond this threshold.

Delivery assignment consisted of ten employees barking ticket instructions into a two-way radio system. Drivers often were unable to use the radio to call in a problem as a steady stream of instructions poured out from the dispatchers. Further, CSR’s were forced to guess when couriers might arrive at their destinations. Without automation, JS management realized they could not reach their goal of 5000 daily deliveries and would have to shelve plans to open operations in other cities.

The old manual system also proved difficult for drivers. Dispatchers had to talk fast as they had so many deliveries to deal with. Drivers were forced to tape radio messages and take notes on pickup instructions. Couriers lost commissions due to failing to clearly hear messages. With 40 to 60 drivers per channel scrambling to speak to dispatchers, it was little more than managed chaos.

“10 dispatchers and several coordinators used to struggle with 3000 deliveries,” said John Cochran, president of JS Logistics. “As the system was manual, drivers would forget what they were supposed to pick up so we had a lot of delivery problems.” 

On the delivery side, for example, JS had little idea when packages would arrive. If the courier was detained and the airwaves were clogged with outbound information, guess work was used on ETAs.

Improving Efficiency

To expand, JS realized it would have to add a dispatch center to each new city. This would cripple margins and make it challenging to remain competitive in new territories. The company, therefore, spent two years searching for the right logistics system. That led them to Cheetah’s automated routing and fleet dispatching application.

The system automatically assigns deliveries to drivers based on factors such as current location, customer requirements, distance, time and cost. The entire pickup and delivery sequence is transmitted to drivers over a wireless network. Drivers use a cell phone to key in the completion of each task. As conditions change, the system recalculates all ETA’s to take into account delays, additional pickups, etc. CSR’s can view this information in real time and relay updates to customers without the need to call dispatchers or drivers.

Cheetah Delivery receives order entry information via phone or the Internet. Telephone orders – accounting for about three-quarters of delivery orders – are keyed in by CSR’s. The software converts the various addresses to their geographical coordinates and analyzes the stops in relation to current driver locations. Once implemented, the technology delivered major benefits.

"My operations department went from 10 dispatchers to five, and I was able to increase my volume from 3,000 deliveries a day to about 7,000 deliveries,” said John Cochran, president of JS Logistics. “By utilizing Cheetah technology, we are able to be a very low cost provider and still make our margin.”

Staff can accurately predict when couriers are going to arrive, and the company can proactively deal with delays. Previously, when a customer called to ask when a courier would arrive, the CSR had to transfer that call to dispatch. Now, 99 percent of calls are dealt with by CSR’s in seconds.

"We don't have one one-hundredth of the problems we used to have with our drivers showing up to collect packages and forgetting who they were supposed to pick up for, what they were supposed to pick up, the number of boxes, where they were going,” said John Cochran, president of JS Logistics. “Every time a courier shows up for a pickup now, he has 100 percent of the delivery information he needs to be successful."

Further, the company is now able to expand into new markets without the need to add more dispatchers. From its offices in St. Louis, JS has centralized dispatch activities for other cities. Kansas City, for example, does not have the usual two to three dispatchers that would typically be found. Instead, a manager and sales person are stationed in Kansas City while all dispatching is run from St. Louis.

“My cost of operations in Kansas City has got to be 20 to 30 percent lower than any of my competitors,” said Cochran.