No Challenge Too Great – Milestone

No Challenge Too Great – Milestone

Milestone’s mobile warehousing & storage solution enables a manufacturer to create an efficient distribution process with timely deliveries.

The Challenge

While meeting with a national beverage manufacturer, Milestone discovered the manufacturer had issues with its hub-and-spoke approach to distributing products into more rural areas. This process involves one of the manufacturer’s road drivers taking a trailer-load of product from their main distribution facility to their distribution facility in an outlying area, which is a simplified cross dock without storage. The road driver then meets the local shuttle driver at this outlying facility to transfer the load between the road and shuttle driver’s trailers. The shuttle driver then leaves this facility to deliver to grocery stores and other locations.

This process resulted in the manufacturer’s drivers losing valuable time waiting for the other to arrive and for the transfer of loads between trailers, especially with Hours of Service (HoS) regulations and implementation of ELDs. This created significant and costly delivery inefficiencies and delays not only with the hub-and-spoke process but throughout the manufacturer’s entire distribution operation. The challenge for the manufacturer was to find a cost-effective method to improve its existing hub-and-spoke process to ensure an efficient distribution operation.

The Solution

As one of the nation’s largest trailer providers, Milestone can offer some of the most flexible, innovative, and cost-effective solutions in the industry. For the challenge faced by this manufacturer, Milestone suggested its Mobile Warehousing & Storage (MW&S) solution. MW&S is the lease/rental of a dry van trailer kept onsite as a storage trailer or able to shuttle short distances, and Milestone is the only national trailer provider with dedicated MW&S trailers.


Milestone provided the manufacturer with a 53-foot dry van trailer kept onsite at the outlying distribution facility to incorporate into its hub-and-spoke process as a pilot. When the road driver arrived at this distribution facility, he offloaded the product from his trailer into the storage trailer via the crossdock into a secured trailer. When the local shuttle driver arrived at the facility, he would load his truck with the product stored on site.

MW&S enabled the manufacturer to create an efficient distribution process with timely deliveries as drivers did not have to wait for each other and transfer loads between trailers. This MW&S storage trailer was also at least 50% less expensive than traditional warehouse space with no term commitment. Based on this successful pilot, the MW&S solution was replicated at the manufacturer’s facilities throughout the country using Milestone’s national footprint.


Milestone logoTo learn more about Milestone’s solutions, call 636-238-8732, email [email protected], or visit www.milecorp.com.