Case study:
Lumber Transload, NE
Reducing Error Rate and Elevating Customer Experience with transloads.co
The Customer:
A Lumber Transload in New England
Operating a 10-acre yard with a 20-railcar track capacity, this independent transload handles over 70 monthly loads of lumber. With just five employees, the team struggled to maintain accurate load documentation and inventory counts while relying on spreadsheets. They needed a streamlined, modern system to reduce costly errors and improve service for their anchor customer.
Key Results at a Glance:
|
Metric |
Details |
|---|---|
|
Error Reduction |
Over 90% fewer load and count errors |
|
Cost Per Load |
$12 per load processed |
|
Onboarding Time |
Fully operational within 2 weeks. |
|
Time Savings |
Eliminated hours of manual, duplicate data entry and invoicing per week. |
|
Customer Visibility |
Real-time inventory, photos, documents & shipment tracking |
|
Customer Satisfaction |
Significantly improved feedback |
The Challenge:
High Error Rates and Poor Customer Visibility
Although Excel provided flexibility, it lacked structure, automation, and audit trails—creating inconsistencies in inventory management. The team faced multiple pain points:
Paper-Based Processes: Field crews used printed pick-lists and handwritten notes, leading to communication gaps and missing documentation.
No Quality Controls: Manual data entry created frequent discrepancies and made it impossible to trace errors efficiently
Limited Transparency: Customers couldn’t view shipment progress or inventory status, resulting in constant update requests, daily reports and lost confidence.
Manual Invoicing: billing required transcribing data from spreadsheets to QuickBooks. Monthly storage billing was time consuming.
The Solution:
Partnership in action.
The company partnered with transloads.co to modernize operations and rebuild customer confidence. With extensive industry experience, the transloads.co team worked directly with yard staff and anchor customers to create a seamless transition plan that stabilized inventory, digitized workflows, and introduced best practices—without disrupting daily operations.y:
Fast Implementation: Fully onboarded and trained in two weeks, including legacy data migration.
Automated Notifications: Customers automatically receive Proof of Delivery (POD) and Proof of Shipment (POS) confirmations.
Customer Portal: Provides real-time visibility into loads, inventory, and photos, reducing inbound status calls by over 80%.
Mobile App: Yard operators now scan and locate inventory directly from mobile devices—improving accuracy and reducing wasted time.
The Results:
Efficiency, Accuracy, and Customer Delight
Within weeks of deployment, the lumber yard saw measurable results across every operational area:
Time Savings: Reduced manual spreadsheet work by 10+ hours per week.
Error Reduction: Achieved a 90%+ drop in picking and count errors through digital validation.
Improved Customer Experience: Clients now have instant access to order details and photos—dramatically reducing update requests.
Operational Uptime: Zero data loss and improved audit readiness for customer reporting.
Business Growth: Enhanced reliability helped secure new customer accounts, driving a 20% year-over-year increase in volume.
A Platform for the Future
With a consistent process and a real-time inventory system, the operation is positioned to add volume, customers, and new lanes—without adding complexity. transloads.co provides the repeatable foundation needed to scale to additional sites while keeping execution and reporting standardized.
Customer Testimonials
transloads.co has completely transformed how we operate. What used to take hours now happens automatically. Our customers are thrilled with the real-time visibility, and our staff is more confident than ever.
Operations Manager
Before, we were always chasing paperwork and second-guessing counts. Now everything’s in one place, right on our phones. It’s fast, accurate, and easy to use
Yard supervisor
Ready to transform your operations?
See how transloads.co can modernize your workflows, reduce errors, and deliver a smoother experience for your customers.
