Case study: A huge time saver for logistics managers

When Alex Alegria, supply chain manager at Hilo, Hawaii-based Waiakea Hawaiian Volcanic Water needs to secure a carrier to deliver her company’s naturally alkaline volcanic water to a customer, she logs into the Convoy shipper platform and keys in the information about the load.

She lets the marketplace do its thing in finding a carrier for her load, and then instructs the warehouse team to move the shipment to the dock for pickup. Once it’s on the road, she can track the shipment right to the customer’s door and give them updates as needed. If a shipment is trending late, Convoy’s team gets involved to rectify the situation or at least provide up-front information to the shipper so that they aren’t saving a warehouse door for a truck that will be late. Alegria then can review the metrics on that particular shipment, benchmark the experience against other deliveries, and use the platform’s analytics to make future decisions.

This is a far cry from how Waiakea Hawaiian Volcanic Water used to handle transportation. “We used six different brokers and a handful of one-off carriers,” says Alegria, who integrated Convoy when she came onboard a year ago. “We had no solid relationships with any one carrier, so getting consistent rates and service were difficult.”

Working with pallets that can weigh up to 2,100 pounds, and products that are prone to damage and/or puncture, Waiakea Water must also pay close attention to how its water is handled during the shipping process. Carriers can also take a picture of the load in real-time to upload to the app so that the shipper and Convoy can all see it in real-time to address any potential problems with loading.

Alegria has been able to institute a more consistent, reliable, and expedient delivery system. “We’re now consistently either getting our water to its destination on the actual due date, or even ahead of time,” she says. “That makes our customers trust us more, and makes them want to order from us more, which is a financial gain for us.”

Working with a digital freight marketplace platform also saves Alegria time and hassle when Waiakea Hawaiian Volcanic Water is in the middle of a production run and shipping anywhere from six to 20 trucks in a single day. “I can do it all on the Convoy platform and let them book everything and set up all of the appointments,” says Alegria. “Then, I can focus on the next production run, or getting water to some of our direct-consumer customers. It’s a huge time-saver for me.”