The owner of G.W. Palmer & Co., Inc., a produce buying company founded in 1929, together with the owners of Left Lane Transportation, Inc. and Dowell Transport, Inc., pooled together their fleet resources, customer bases, and years of experience in the transportation and logistics industries to form G.W. Palmer Logistics, LLC. Since 2007, the transportation brokerage firm has helped its customers deliver their products throughout the United States, specializing in produce but also hauling a variety of goods such as poultry, rice, lunchmeat, and other fresh and frozen foods, as well as plastics and other non-food items. Its fleet resources include a vast nationwide database of dependable carriers in addition to 15 owner/operators and 6 trucks of its own. The company’s corporate headquarters are based in Batesville, AR, with satellite offices in Florida, Tennessee, Indiana, and California.

One of the biggest challenges facing G.W. Palmer Logistics was a lack of communication amongst its several offices and its customers. The company routinely used a chalkboard and paper-based methods for dispatching, leading to service delays, data entry duplication, and redundant status calls. Accounting operations were handled using Intuit QuickBooks^®, although there was no integration between the dispatching and accounting systems to simplify the large amounts of data processing required each day.

The projection of strong company growth highlighted the need to improve communication and streamline operations as soon as possible. “If you plan to grow and take on new offices, they all need to be on the same playing field,” said Operations Manager Ellie Johnson. “We didn’t have the means to make this happen. We knew we needed to add some level of automation to our daily processes to achieve that goal.”

Bobby McClure, President and CEO of G.W. Palmer and owner of Left Lane Transportation, reviewed several leading trucking software products and learned of the Prophesy DispatchSeries line of trucking software solutions. He viewed a comprehensive demonstration of the software with Jay Votzakis, Prophesy Senior Account Manager, and was impressed with the user-friendly interfaces, the array of capabilities and configurable options, and the balance of cost and features. The software would also interface with his existing QuickBooks accounting system and would require minimal time for staff training and software implementation.

McClure invested in Prophesy Dispatch with QuickBooks interface, including modules for commercial mileage and routing, fuel tax reporting, document imaging, online load posting, and brokerage capabilities. A 23-user license ensured full access to the software for personnel at all G.W. Palmer sites.

Johnson, along with the company’s head of accounting and a data entry clerk, attended a two-day software instruction course at the University of Prophesy in Bloomfield, CT. They then returned to the office to train the remainder of the office staff. In a matter of days, the system was operational across the entire company network. Johnson continues to train all new users of the Prophesy software at the company’s remote offices as needed.

Johnson and the G.W. Palmer workforce are more than pleased with the results achieved with Prophesy. The main office is now in direct and complete communication with its satellite offices given the introduction of real-time data exchange between them. The company’s dispatch and accounting systems are now fully integrated, allowing a seamless flow of accounting data from Prophesy Dispatch to QuickBooks. The Prophesy Document Imaging module allows users to scan important documents and easily share them with their customers and other offices for a variety of purposes, while significantly reducing the company’s paper usage. Furthermore, the Prophesy Online Load Posting module allows carriers to easily find and bid on any of G.W. Palmer’s available loads at various online load posting boards. “Now that we use the Prophesy system, the data entry problems, miscommunication, and unnecessary phone calls that used to bog us down have been all but eliminated,” said Johnson.

G.W. Palmer is continually growing and has ambitious plans for the future, thanks to the newfound improvements in efficiency and communication made possible by the Prophesy implementation. “We are always opening new offices, bringing on new brokers, and leasing new vehicles for our fleet,” said Johnson. “None of this would be possible without Prophesy.”

For more information on Prophesy's Total Solution for Trucking, email moreinfo@mile.com or call 800-776-6706.