ping. The 3PL had an intriguing business
proposition for the cooperative. One of its
clients, Tropicana, which is also one of Ocean
Spray’s competitors in the fruit juice business, was already shipping fresh fruit by boxcar on CSX Transportation trains from
Florida to New Jersey—and sending empty
boxcars back to Florida. Since much of
Ocean Spray’s Lakeland-bound freight originated in Bordentown, N.J., Wheels Clipper
suggested that Ocean Spray could take
advantage of that backhaul capacity. That
would mean a substantial savings in both
transportation costs and carbon emissions.
Both are significant goals for Ocean Spray.
“For us, sustainability is an enterprisewide
focus,” says Kristine Young, who leads the
cooperative’s sustainability efforts. She works
with growers and suppliers on a variety of
sustainability efforts that encompass energy
and water use, packaging, and transportation, among others.
Young believes that Ocean Spray’s commitment to sustainability may be what attracted
the attention of the third party. Ocean Spray
has been a partner in the Environmental
Protection Agency’s (EPA) Smart Way program for several years, as are 95 percent of the company’s carriers.
Participants in the program commit to benchmarking
their shipping operations and taking steps to reduce
fuel use and emissions. “Our SmartWay participation
was a clear indication we are interested in sustainability,” she says.
PHOTO COURTESY OF OCEAN SPRAY
COST AND EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS
Ocean Spray decided Wheels Clipper’s proposal was
worth pursuing. After looking into the matter further, it
determined it could indeed take advantage of the backhaul opportunity—though it would require a few
minor adjustments in its shipping patterns.
“One thing we had to look at was our load planning,”
Young recalls. Each truckload shipment held 19 pallets
of goods, but boxcars handle 38. “We had to take that
into consideration in our order fulfillment planning,”
she says. “We had to do a little bit of work on the pallet
size and the configuration of the pallets.”
Delivery schedules also required some adjustment.
Shipping goods by truck takes three days, while the
journey by rail takes four to five days. That meant ask-
ing the Florida DC to carry more inventory than it
might otherwise have done.
The payoff, however, promised to be enormous. The
arrangement that was eventually put in place resulted
in Ocean Spray’s shifting 80 percent of the New
Jersey-to-Florida shipments to rail over a 12-month
period, yielding reductions in both shipping costs and
emissions.
The emissions cuts attracted the attention of the
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which was putting together a series of case studies on companies that
have cut freight costs and carbon emissions through
improved logistics practices. EDF, in turn, approached
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT)
Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) and
asked it to conduct a study of the Ocean Spray program under EDF’s sponsorship. In January, the CTL
released its study on Ocean Spray and the results it
achieved.
Among other findings, the report, Case Studies in
Carbon-Efficient Logistics: Ocean Spray – Leveraging
Distribution Network Redesign, showed that by shifting
the traffic from truck to rail, Ocean Spray slashed transportation costs in the lane by 40 percent.
The emissions reductions in the lane were also
impressive. According to the MIT analysis, the shift
resulted in a savings of 1,300 metric tons of carbon
dioxide—or CO2—a 68-percent reduction in the lane,
meaning an overall emissions reduction in Ocean
Spray’s distribution network of 20 percent. The MIT
study says that was the equivalent of cutting fuel use by
100,000 gallons.
SUCCESS FACTORS
In addition to quantifying the savings, the CTL report
looked at the factors that made the program successful.
In Ocean Spray’s case, the company had a number of
things working in its favor, says Dr. Edgar A. Blanco,
research director for the CTL and leader of the study.
