Cheetah Software Services, Inc., an SaaS transportation logistics solution provider, announced that Central Freight Lines has utilized the Cheetah Freight solution to achieve the cost savings and organizational changes necessary to weather today’s treacherous economic conditions. Central Freight, a nationwide LTL carrier, has utilized Cheetah Freight to accomplish in a few short months what were previously long-term operational goals of consolidation and centralization.

In difficult economic times, many companies resort to drastic cost-cutting measures to survive, often damaging their competitiveness and hampering customer service and satisfaction. The most successful companies, on the other hand, find ways to improve their competitive position while still controlling costs and improving customer service—thus improving their performance in the market when the economy recovers.

By implementing Cheetah Freight, Central Freight made the decision to focus on dramatically improving the visibility of drivers and deliveries, while increasing the timeliness and effectiveness of communications between drivers, dispatchers, customer service reps, and customers. By doing so, the carrier was able to not only improve driver productivity and reduce miles per stop, but more important to consolidate and centralize dispatch and customer service and thus strengthen its overall position.

“After only six months or so, Cheetah has already helped us accomplish the 3-5% increase in productivity and the 5-10% reduction in miles per stop that we hoped to achieve with the solution. But our return on investment has gone far beyond what we anticipated,” said Mark Stein, Central Freight’s Director of Operations. “Even more important, we’ve been able to remotely dispatch multiple locations from a single location. We’ve been able to consolidate management teams and more efficiently manage the business. And, we’ve been able to provide better customer service by centralizing our customer service function.”

Specifically, Cheetah Freight provides Central Freight’s dispatchers with three primary advantages. First, the solution provides real-time pickup and delivery status information that was previously unavailable. Second, dispatchers can now make decisions more efficiently, on the fly, regarding the best drivers to service on-demand pickups. And third, Central Freight can gather information on pickup and delivery status and integrate it into their backend systems for immediate processing, rather than waiting until the end of the day.

In addition, Central Freight customers benefit by receiving instant access to better information on delivery and pickup status, knowing not only where a shipment has been but also where it is going, when it will arrive, and when the recipient has signed for it—all in real time. Overall, this enhanced customer visibility provides carriers like Central Freight with a significant competitive advantage.

“With Cheetah, everyone—dispatchers, customer service reps, customer employees—enjoys visibility into deliveries and pickups.” said Stephan Karczag, Cheetah’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “This visibility helps Cheetah customers tremendously in today’s troubled economic times, providing significant reductions in the miles driven and the amount of fuel that’s used.”

“We simply didn’t expect Cheetah to enable us to accelerate our long-term plans for consolidation and centralization. Our ability to do so has helped us weather the storm in this incredibly difficult economy,” said Stein.

For more information about Cheetah Software Systems, Inc. contact Mark Coppock at mcoppock@cheetah.com.

About Cheetah Software Systems, Inc.:

Cheetah Software Systems provides dynamic, intelligent wireless solutions to automate and optimize delivery route planning, pickup assignment, dispatch, and customer service. Fully scalable and Web-based, Cheetah solutions increase productivity and profitability for carriers of any size with minimal up-front costs. Cheetah’s private fleet and LTL customers utilize GPS-enabled phones and PDAs to schedule, route, and track drivers and shipments. Today, Cheetah streamlines business and home delivery transactions for hundreds of firms across North America. For more information call 888-Cheetah or visit www.cheetah.com.

About Central Freight Lines:

Central Freight Lines is a less-than-truckload (LTL) for-hire common motor carrier of general freight commodities headquartered in Waco, TX.  Founded in 1925, the company is privately owned by Mr. Jerry Moyes of Phoenix, AZ and operates from 52 terminals nationwide.  Central Freight Lines is recognized for its ongoing accomplishments in service, quality, and safety.  For more information call 800-782-5036 or visit online www.centralfreight.com.