F3 chat: Reducing waste in your supply chain approach

‘You need to intertwine sustainability into your transportation strategy’

FreightWaves’ Tyler Cole and Ardagh Group’s Brad Benbow at FreightWaves’ F3 Virtual Experience. (Photo: FreightWaves)

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Hello efficiency, goodbye empty miles

DETAILS: A discussion on building sustainable transportation solutions in your supply chain.

INTERVIEWER AND SPEAKER: Tyler Cole, director of carbon intelligence at FreightWaves, and Brad Benbow, business growth investments at Ardagh Group, a global supplier of sustainable packaging solutions.

BIO: Benbow has been with Ardagh Group for four years, initially starting as a national transportation coordinator. In his current role with business growth investments, he oversees and reports on the success and return on capital investment projects. Benbow began his career in logistics as an account executive.

Watch: Hello efficiency, goodbye empty miles

KEY QUOTES FROM BENBOW:

On eliminating waste in the freight value chain: “We partner with folks like Convoy. … This essentially set up a program for us to reduce our empty miles from the origin point of where our plant was located. We would send our products to a forward warehouse, that truck would then be assigned another load not associated with Ardagh, and it would keep it in this loop. It just essentially eliminated all empty miles and idle time for that truck driver.”

On the importance of batch shipments to sustainability: “The longer you can keep a driver in your system that is close to where they’re dropping off is incredible. Because then they are batched out for call it a week, call it two weeks. Not only are they going to be able to earn more revenue, their service is most likely going to be better because of how you are able to incorporate them and treat them while they’re in your network.”

On Ardagh Group’s approach to sustainable transportation solutions: “How can we best position ourselves to ensure that we’re maximizing our partners’ capabilities as well? Because a lot of people bring very fundamental ideas that can help us reduce our carbon footprint on the transport side. We’ve got to be open to hearing this.”

Click for more FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden.

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Todd Maiden

Based in Richmond, VA, Todd is the finance editor at FreightWaves. Prior to joining FreightWaves, he covered the TLs, LTLs, railroads and brokers for RBC Capital Markets and BB&T Capital Markets. Todd began his career in banking and finance before moving over to transportation equity research where he provided stock recommendations for publicly traded transportation companies.