Planet Logistics

Planet Logistics celebrates two anniversaries this year – its own ten-year birthday and ten years of being part of CX, the world’s largest trading hub for same-day and express freight carriers. Established in 2000 by former Lynx employees David Summerhayes and Glyn Hall, Planet Logistics has grown alongside CX.

In the early days it was purely a three-man band with David Summerhayes and Glyn Hall out on the road while colleague, Roger Jackson, a sales expert, pulled in new business. Now Planet Logistics has three offices, in Gloucester, Reading and Bristol with many vehicles and drivers.

Courier Exchange has been an integral part of this expansion according to David, who has been in transport and logistics for the bulk of his working life. “We heard about Courier Exchange through word of mouth and thought we’d give it a go to see if it increased business. It undoubtedly has.”

After being introduced to Courier Exchange by several business partners, Andy decided to join the Exchange in February 2007 and hasn’t looked back since. The platform has given them access to over 5,400 member companies allowing them to take on more work and reduce dead mileage.

Redhead Couriers was the first member company who volunteered to take part in the trials for the combined advanced vehicle tracking with the Exchange. By integrating their existing Navman Wireless telematics solution with Courier Exchange, the company can provide complete visibility and status of their vehicles to more than 5,400 fellow operators in the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe.

As a result, Redhead Couriers are now able to better promote their available fleet capacity, match their precise vehicle locations to new load opportunities and also offer the ability for trading partners to monitor the progress of loads whilst in transit.

Speaking recently about the telematics integration, Andy commented: “We have been a longstanding member of Courier Exchange, but we were looking at ways of simplifying our internal processes while seeing where we could pick up additional work.”

“The added visibility and control from the vehicle tracking integration allows us to work closely with our partners, streamline our transport planning and boost the profitability of our business. The integration also has the benefit that we can publish our available fleet capacity without having to enter this information into the Courier Exchange website.”

The company originally adopted the Navman Wireless vehicle tracking solution in order to monitor driver behaviour, reduce fuel usage and boost operational performance. One of the main reasons for selecting Navman Wireless was its ability to integrate with the Exchange, providing an effective means of streamlining supply chain processes and optimising fleet performance.

The added visibility and control from the vehicle tracking integration allows us to work closely with our partners, streamline our transport planning and boost the profitability of our business.

Redhead Couriers uses the Courier Exchange from two sites in Colchester and London, with around 10 per cent of loads coming via the freight trading platform. By taking real-time locations of available capacity direct from the tracking software, the company has already experienced an increase in incoming job enquiries, while trading partners are now able to view the exact whereabouts and progress of their loads whilst in transit to provide added peace of mind.

Lyall Cresswell, Managing Director of Transport Exchange Group said: “We are committed to taking a partnership approach with other leading technology providers to fully integrate complementary third-party systems for the benefit of our members such as Redhead Couriers.

By accessing live operational data from vehicle tracking and transport management solutions, users of our freight exchange can take advantage of this operational insight to provide complete visibility of available resources and capacity. The automated data feed also cuts down on the need to manually update the Exchange with this information, saving time and making it easier to operate.”