CASE STUDY – GFS Small Deliveries Program

OVERVIEW

Gordon Food Service, Canada’s largest temperature-controlled foodservice distributor, was facing an explosion of small deliveries that its bulk-centric network could no longer handle efficiently.

Trigger for Intervention: Route density collapsed, AZ drivers were scarce, and small orders crushed margins. The network was out of date and out of time.

THE CHALLENGE

Outdated logic and inflexible routing exposed the network as small orders surged beyond control.

• Oversized trucks for tiny jobs. Full-length TTs were running urban and rural routes with light loads and excessive stops.
• Escalating costs and eroding efficiency. Large call density had been plummeting, hidden by a sudden rise in small deliveries. Service consistency broke down.
• Driver constraints with Class 1/AZ licenses. Low recruitment and regulatory hurdles throttled labour supply.
• No definition of ‘small delivery’. Teams lacked a clear cube threshold to reroute or reassign.
• Flat, inflexible network model. Treated all deliveries equally, regardless of weight, cube, or geography.

THE APPROACH

Gary Newbury, an established Supply Chain Management Consultant, was commissioned to design a scalable last mile national strategy — one that reduced costs, unlocked new driver pools, and rebuilt routing logic from the cube up.

• Mapped 45,000+ deliveries. Identified under-35 cube clusters ripe for reassignment.
• Specified 16-foot reefer trucks. Created specs for G Class license drivers to handle dense, low-order cube routes with 20-25 calls per truck.
• Built new SOPs. Covered routing, order release, selection, loading and delivery to drive consistent national execution.
• Navigated regulatory complexity. Clustered licensing thresholds across 10 provinces and flagged risk zones.
• Ran real-world trials across regions. Worked alongside drivers to stress-test rounds in Ontario, Alberta, and BC.

THE SOLUTION

A cube-led routing model separated low-volume orders from high-volume runs and removed inefficiencies nationwide.

• Redefined routing architecture. TT routes were built first, then small-order clusters were peeled and reassigned.
• Inserted small delivery vehicles (SDV) with high density. Sub-35 cube orders consolidated into 20–25 stop SDV routes.
• Eliminated excess TTs. Re-routing often removed 2 trucks entirely from the original daily plan.
• Embedded two-for-one logic. Routing shifted from fulfilment-first to cost-first, unlocking a significant and sustainable margin.
• Knowledge transferred and scaled with 50+ SDVs. Business case projected $20M in annual cost savings when fully implemented.