[ IN PRACTICE ] CASEBOOK
American Standard: Flushed With Success THE CUSTOMER American Standard is a North
As a leading North American brand, American Standard has been offering innovative products for more than 150 years. One of its products—the humble but essential toilet—is practically synonymous with the company name.
American manufacturer of plumbing fixtures headquartered in Piscataway, New Jersey. The brand has been a mainstay in the building industry for the past 150 years. THE PROVIDER Hercules Forwarding is an asset- based less-than-truckload (LTL) motor carrier and customs brokerage with Canadian headquarters in New Westminster, British Columbia and U.S. headquarters in Vernon, California. It specializes in U.S.-Canada shipments with a specific focus on transloading solutions.
Prior to engaging Hercules, American Standard interviewed several potential candidates. “We actually used two companies for a while—Hercules being one of them—but the other company didn’t do as good a job so we settled on using Hercules only,” Harlow says. Almost 20 years later, the partnership endures. It has grown to the point that American Standard currently transloads more than half of its cross-border shipments. Transloading not only reduces shipping times but also cuts down on damage claims. “We set up the operation exactly how American Standard needed it set up,” says John Volpe, who as president of Vocar Transportation oversees Hercules’ Texas operation. “We were exible and catered to their speci c needs.” IT ALL STARTS WITH CROSS DOCKING Theirs is a relationship grounded in distribution. It starts with cross-docking operations at the border in Laredo, Texas. Cross-docking entails unloading goods from vehicles making incoming shipments at a logistics facility and transferring them to vehicles handling outgoing shipments. The point is to incur little or no storage time in between.
American Standard produces most of these units in one of four manufacturing plants it operates in Mexico and then ships them to distribution centers in the United States and Canada. For a long time, the company relied solely on large and direct carriers to ship its product from Mexico. However, constant rate increases were affecting the bottom line. “In 2005, we decided to go down to Laredo, Texas and see what other options we could nd,” recalls Gary Harlow, a leader at Amstan Logistics, the logistics arm of American Standard, Inc. TRANSLOADING IS THE SOLUTION That’s when American Standard connected with Vocar Transportation (acquired by Hercules in 2010) and landed on a transloading solution. “We began bringing our freight up to the border with Mexican carriers and then transloading the shipments at Hercules and putting them on U.S. trailers,” Harlow explains. A practice that wasn’t as prevalent in 2005 as it is today, transloading is the transfer of goods from one mode of transportation to another enroute to its ultimate destination. “A lot of companies transload now,” Harlow notes.
by June Allan Corrigan
July 2024 • Inbound Logistics 201
Powered by FlippingBook