Our Customer - Major UK Supermarket

McLanachan Transport has worked with a major supermarket chain for many years. With superstores and regional distribution centres across the UK and Europe, ensuring all products arrive on the shelves when expected, is a massive undertaking for our customer. Our experience and track-record within temperature-controlled supply chain solutions was a leading factor in our customer having the confidence to award us a complicated new logistics contract. An additional aspect where our client found a benefit was our levels of real-time reporting and open communications.

The Challenges - On-time Overnight Logistics

The supermarket chain had signed a deal with a supplier network on the East Coast of Scotland. The contract required multiple collections across the region, consolidation in the Central Belt of Scotland and overnight delivery to their regional distribution centre in Greater London.

Due to the volume of fresh produce involved, the contract required two full trailers to be delivered from Central Scotland to London, seven days a week. We needed to overcome several logistical hurdles for the contract to run without any issues, including providing a dedicated vehicle and driver availability service, driver rest periods and factoring in waiting time at the multiple pickup locations.

The Solution - Dedicated Logistics Team

The logistics planning team at McLanachan Transport crafted a detailed proposal for our customer, which would cover all foreseeable eventualities to help minimise any problems. As much as you can plan to mitigate scheduling issues, in our experience, we know that flexibility is also key to delivering a service of this kind.

We set up a dedicated team of four drivers, each with a minimum of four years of experience at McLanachan's Transport to run and operate the contract. This team would allow for continuity of service and reduce any induction time for drivers unfamiliar with the tight timeframe of the daily schedule.

Our dual temperature-controlled trailers would begin uplifting the produce from noon and report the live data back to the customer who could monitor the temperature readings and route of each vehicle. Once our drivers made all collections, they would return to our warehouse in the evening for consolidation and onward overnight travel to our client’s London Regional Distribution Centre, arriving by the agreed 6 am deadline the following day.

The contract has now been running for almost a year, with a 100% consolidation and on-time delivery record. To date, there have been no reported issues with any of the transported goods, or delivery schedules, which is testament to the dedication of the team at McLanachan Transport.