Calculating Precise ETAs with FourKites' Averrit Partnership

The Challenge

Averitt Express is a leading provider of freight transportation and supply chain management, with international reach to more than 100 countries. The company is values-driven, with express commitments to continuous improvement and exceeding customer expectations.

One of Averitt’s long-standing customers is a national chain of restaurants and retail stores. Averitt operates a dedicated fleet for retail deliveries from the customer’s distribution center near Nashville, Tn. to over 600 retail locations across 45 states. It is a complex transportation operation, with each store typically receiving multiple deliveries per week based on demand at individual locations. The variability in delivery times and routes creates a scheduling challenge for store managers; they have to ensure team members are on-site and available to unload trucks when they arrive, but can’t have underutilized staff, merely waiting around for trucks to arrive. Accurate, predictive visibility into delivery times is therefore particularly critical for store managers, who rely on it to schedule store labor.

FourKites Solution

FourKites used its proven, repeatable integration process and dedicated onboarding team to seamlessly bring Averitt’s loads onto the FourKites platform. To ensure that Averitt teams could operate the platform autonomously with minimal need for assistance from FourKites, key Averitt personnel were trained as superusers and taught to take advantage of FourKites’ many tools and capabilities.

“One of our core values is continuous improvement. FourKites shares that philosophy and has been the right provider to help us enhance our service to one of Averitt’s longest-standing and most valued customers.”

Nick Fields, Averitt’s Director of Analysis and Administration

Benefits and What’s Next?

Averitt and its customer are now able to calculate very precise ETAs for trucks arriving at retail store locations based on up-to-the-minute, highly-accurate data from the FourKites platform. This granular visibility has helped Averitt deliver a top-tier, tech-enabled customer offering that helps its customer optimize its labor costs.

As of the writing of this case study, Averitt was rolling out a new notification service, equipping its customer’s store managers with FourKites access via iPads, empowering them to track shipments from departure to delivery.

“One of our core values is continuous improvement,” said Nick Fields, Averitt’s Director of Analysis and Administration. “FourKites shares that philosophy and has been the right provider to help us enhance our service to one of Averitt’s longest-standing and most valued customers.”