---
title: "Carrier performance at a $22M regional distributor"
description: "A worked example: the carrier-management failure points at a composite regional distributor, the scorecard that fixes them, and the numbers it would have to hit."
doc_version: "2026-05-20"
last_updated: "2025-01-15T16:00:00.000Z"
canonical_url: https://www.lightforgeworks.com/blog/industrial-distribution-case-study/
---

# Carrier performance at a $22M regional distributor

# Carrier performance at a $22M regional distributor

This is a composite company: a $22M regional distributor of industrial equipment, shipping across three states. The workflow and the failure points are real patterns. The company and the numbers are illustrative.

## The problem

The distributor runs about 2,500 shipments a month through more than 40 carriers, and tracks none of it in one place. Carrier evaluation lives in spreadsheets and phone calls, roughly 15 hours a week of an operations person's time. A delivery failure surfaces when the customer calls, usually about two weeks after it happened. The company spends about $35,000 a year resolving delivery complaints, and negotiates its carrier contracts with no performance data.

## The build

A carrier scorecard. It reads the shipment data the company already has, scores each carrier on delivery reliability, cost, damage rate, and transit time, and sends an alert when a carrier's numbers drop. The dashboard ranks carriers side by side, so decisions about the carrier mix have a basis. Ten weeks to build. The client's team spends about ten hours on it.

## The numbers it would have to hit

- On-time delivery: 87 percent up to 94
- Delivery complaints: down about a quarter
- Problem identification: two weeks to a day
- Carrier evaluation effort: 15 hours a week to 2
- Savings from shifting volume off the bottom performers: roughly $175,000 a year

[Read the full case study →](/blog/industrial-distribution-case-study-full)

## Interactive Demo

<div class="solution-embed">
  <iframe src="/static/demos/industrial-distribution/industrial-distribution-demo.html" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0" style="border-radius: 8px; box-shadow: 0 4px 12px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);"></iframe>
  <p style="text-align: center; margin-top: 10px; font-style: italic; color: #666;">Interactive demonstration of the ForgeWorks Carrier Performance Dashboard</p>
</div>

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