Industry: Distribution & Delivery

The Situation: Temco Distribution wanted to automate deliveries without the headache of having to purchase and operate expensive hardware and software onsite.

The Cheetah Solution: Temco selected the Cheetah Delivery™ logistics optimization and dispatch application. Instead of purchasing the software, Temco rents it from Cheetah on an Application Service Provider (ASP) basis for a low monthly fee per truck.

Temco Distribution of Pomona, California provides home delivery, service trucking, general freight services and warehousing throughout Southern California. It is a family owned and operated business with 46 trucks and about 125 employees.

“We hit a situation with the volume of traffic we were approaching,” said Roy Burke, president of Temco. “Once you get over 500-600 deliveries a day, it gets very difficult to manually route it by hand, with people standing by as traffic is generated.”

Burke said that along with the goal to handle more volume without adding staff, customer service had to be greatly improved.

“We were having tremendous problems with tracking reschedules and we would actually miss customers and the product would not go out on the day it was supposed to,” said Burke. “They were expecting a delivery and it didn't happen. That has been eliminated with the Cheetah Delivery system.”

Temco utilizes Cheetah Delivery using the Application System Provider (ASP) model. While large companies often prefer to buy hardware and software outright, this does not always prove economical for small and mid-sized outfits. Such companies rent Cheetah Delivery on an ASP basis for a low monthly fee per truck.

An ASP offers access to applications and related services via the Internet. ASP services make sense for small companies, those with a low technology budget, or those who wish to outsource technology services.

Through Cheetah’s ASP service, companies experience an immediate Return on Investment (ROI). They are able to expand without increasing administrative or operational costs. Some companies want to double their business, for example, but if it takes double the current workforce, they can't afford it. They need to be able to do more work in less time.

This was the case at Temco, where the ASP model has permitted the company to grow while increasing margins.

“Cheetah Delivery has enabled us to provide superior customer service while our volume increases,” said Burke. “This is the opposite of what we experienced before. As our volume increases, we can now easily handle more deliveries.” 

Using Cheetah’s ASP model also kept the project from getting delayed amongst a large number of high-priority IT projects. It is not uncommon, after all, for IT departments to be booked months in advance. Outsourcing to an ASP allowed Temco to implement Cheetah Delivery with minimal IT interaction. Temco also realized a lower cost of implementation since they did not have to buy any new hardware. Implementation was rapid since they did not have to put together an infrastructure to support the installation and maintenance of the system.

“I really looked for a better deal and researched four or five different systems,” said Burke. “Dollar for dollar, the Cheetah system was the most advanced, the most complete and Cheetah was the most willing to work with us on the integration needed.”

In his experience, most other companies wanted to just hand you the software and tell you to install it. Cheetah came in, however, and conducted hands on training to ensure the system worked perfectly in the Temco environment.

“Cheetah has been very helpful throughout the process,” said Burke. “They had the better product and using the ASP model, it’s a better bargain, too.”