New Castle Building Products has reduced its fleet mileage by approximately 25,000 miles annually by implementing Descartes' route planning and execution solution. By replacing manual planning with data-driven routing, the company has lowered fuel consumption and costs, improved route consistency and accuracy, and enhanced on-time delivery performance. This shift allows the distributor to meet rising customer expectations while operating a more efficient and scalable distribution network across the Northeastern U.S.

The company manages a large fleet with complex multi-stop routes, variable jobsite constraints, and tight delivery windows across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Prior to the implementation, route planning was manual and decentralized, making it difficult to consistently optimize deliveries across locations as demand increased. The new system enables centralized dispatch operations and dynamically optimizes routes based on real-world constraints such as delivery windows, vehicle capacity, and traffic.

Operational Benefits

The adoption of the Descartes platform has yielded specific operational improvements for New Castle Building Products:

• Reduced Mileage: Approximately 25,000 miles removed from routes annually.
• Lower Costs: Decreased fuel consumption and operational expenses.
• Enhanced Reliability: Improved delivery reliability and on-time performance.
• Increased Density: Maximized route density and vehicle capacity use without increasing fleet size.

Strategic Impact

The solution provides end-to-end visibility to drive continuous fleet performance improvement and higher productivity. By centralizing dispatch operations, New Castle can better control costs without compromising service standards. The system also helps ensure efficient delivery execution, keeping contractor jobs on schedule while reducing emissions.

"With more intelligent routing and better visibility into daily operations, companies can reduce unnecessary miles and fuel consumption, centralize dispatch operations across locations, and improve overall fleet performance," said James Wee, General Manager, Fleet Management at Descartes.