---
title: "Load planning at Regional Food Distributors"
description: "A worked example for a $47M food distributor: a load-planning build, a 90 percent truck utilization target, and the fuel math it would have to hit."
doc_version: "2026-05-20"
last_updated: "2025-01-15T17:00:00.000Z"
canonical_url: https://www.lightforgeworks.com/blog/regional-food-distributors-case-study/
---

# Load planning at Regional Food Distributors

# Load planning at Regional Food Distributors

Regional Food Distributors is a composite company: a $47M food distributor running 45 trucks across six states. The workflow and the failure points are real patterns; the company and the numbers are illustrative.

## The problem

Two senior dispatchers plan the loads by hand, and they are good at it. Trucks still roll at 60 to 70 percent utilization, which leaves money on every route. Both dispatchers are within a few years of retirement, and nothing they know is written down: which customers pair on a route, which drivers run which lanes, when to split a load. Fuel keeps rising, and the margin on each run depends on how full the truck leaves the dock.

## The build

A load-planning tool that reads the day's orders, truck capacity, and routes, and proposes the load plan for each day. It carries the dispatchers' rules, so the pairing decisions and the lane assignments stop living in two heads. Dispatchers review each plan and adjust it; the tool takes the adjustments as new rules. It connects to the fleet system. Ten weeks to build. The dispatch team spent about ten hours on it.

## The numbers it would have to hit

- Truck utilization: 70 percent up to 90, twenty points
- Capacity: about 30 percent more freight on the same 45 trucks
- Fuel and operating costs: roughly $280,000 a year saved

At ninety percent utilization the same fleet carries the growth plan without buying trucks, and the routing rules survive the retirements.

**[Read the full walkthrough →](/blog/regional-food-distributors-case-study-full)**

## Interactive Demo

<div class="solution-embed">
  <iframe src="/static/demos/regional-food-distributors/regional-food-distributors-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 Load Optimization System</p>
</div>

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