PHOTO COURTESY OF RYDER SYSTEM
their own trucks and fleets,” explains John Wagner,
Gibraltar’s corporate vice president of supply chain management. “We weren’t getting the optimization on the loads
like an expert in the field no matter how we tried. So we
decided to outsource this [so we could] do a better job and
tap into a wider network of backhaul opportunities.”
In fact, one of the corporation’s building products companies had already tested the outsourcing waters. About five
years back, Jacksonville, Fla.-based Southeastern Metals
Manufacturing Co. (SEMCO) had turned over management of its private fleet to a third-party logistics service
provider (3PL).
SEMCO, which had hired the third party to address problems like lack of truck availability, was happy with the 3PL’s
performance. Nonetheless, Gibraltar decided to go with a
different service provider when it expanded the outsourcing program. With fleets scattered throughout the country,
it wanted a 3PL with a national presence.
After weighing its alternatives, Gibraltar chose a national
player, Ryder Logistics of Miami, Fla. Under the arrangement the two parties worked out, Gibraltar owns most of
the trailers, but leases the trucks from Ryder. Ryder maintains the equipment, and the drivers who operate the trucks
are Ryder employees.
Today, Ryder Logistics manages a dedicated fleet of more
than 50 trucks at four locations within Gibraltar’s Building
Products Group. Besides the SEMCO operation in
Jacksonville, Ryder oversees fleet operations for Appleton
Supply Co., which makes roofing and other metal products
at a plant in Appleton, Wis. It also runs a fleet for Dot
Metals, both at the company’s manufacturing plant in San
Antonio, Texas, and its distribution center in Houston. In
December 2008, Ryder began taking over the operations of
a nationwide fleet run by another Gibraltar subsidiary,
Alabama Metal Industries (AMICO). Once Ryder assumes
full control of AMICO’s fleet, which is expected to be by the
end of 2009, it will be managing 65 percent of Gibraltar’s
private fleets.
Cut costs, boost service, repeat
When it turned over its fleet management to Ryder,
Gibraltar set three overall goals for its new partner. First, it
wanted to stabilize fleet operations at various locations to
improve service. Second, it wanted to reduce or eliminate
costs. Finally, it wanted Ryder to pursue ongoing opportunities for further cost reductions and service improvements
across multiple Gibraltar divisions.
To that end, Ryder instituted a number of efficiency programs. For example, at the SEMCO facility, which services
distribution centers in Atlanta, Miami, and Lakeland, Fla.,
Ryder developed an order monitoring system that has
improved the load planning process. In the past, SEMCO
had little advance notice of upcoming orders, which meant
it was often left scrambling to manually assign loads to
trucks at the last minute. Now, when a customer places an
order, that order is entered into a computer system, which
then groups orders for optimal routing and load building.
At Appleton Supply, Ryder instituted a dynamic fleet
routing application to improve shipping efficiency. Since
the orders come from different customers in different locations, the fleet is unable to operate fixed routes. In the past,
that lack of predictability made efficient routing difficult.
Under the new arrangement, when an order comes in,
