Responsibility
Driving transportation efficiencies with collaboration
By better utilizing our fleet, we’re taking trucks off the road to reduce cost and waste
It all started with a question. Why not?
“During the slow agricultural season, we have WinField United trucks with excess capacity. Why not utilize our internal fleet to transport other products, too?” says Chris Powers, Transportation Manager, Outbound Strategy and Innovation.
Thanks to collaboration across the Land O’Lakes network, we’re shipping seed, crop protection, animal nutrition products and ingredients—all on the same fleet of trucks. As a result, we’re reducing dependence on third-party carriers, saving money and better utilizing the trucks we already own.
“We're trying to utilize the fleet as much as possible to eliminate empty miles. You're starting to see trucks come off the road and we're filling that gap with the capacity that we already have,” says Chris. “The first 6 months of this year, we already surpassed everything we did in 2024.”
From load factor to asset utilization
Historically, our transportation strategy had been centered on increasing load factor (average weight per shipment) to maximize capacity of the trucks we own in our WinField United fleet.
By doubling the load factor and right-sizing our fleet over the past five years, we’ve successfully taken thousands of shipments—and hundreds of thousands of miles—off the road.
While we need to maintain a certain threshold of trucks and trailers to cover seasonal demand, we also need to explore transportation efficiencies during non-peak times of the year. That’s when the focus on asset utilization came into play.
“We're trying to utilize the fleet as much as possible to eliminate empty miles. You're starting to see trucks come off the road and we're filling that gap with the capacity that we already have,” says Chrish Powers, Transportation Manager, Outbound Strategy and Innovation. “The first 6 months of this year, we already surpassed everything we did in 2024.”
Being good stewards
The team explored the opportunity for combining shipments by focusing on WinField United Agronomy Service Centers (ASCs) in the Midwest that were within a 250-mile radius of Animal Nutrition and Nutra Blend locations.
“We've been engaging differently with our ASC network and Feed operations teams and working with them to think more holistically,” Chris says. “We keep testing and learning along the way.”
This success story is a perfect example of the value of the co-op model, adds Tyler Stowers, Director of Transportation. “A big part of this story is a renewed focus on total system assets; thinking in terms of our entire end-to-end network and how we can leverage all assets across the enterprise,” says Tyler. “At the end of the day, our retailers are invested in these assets and it’s our responsibility to be good stewards.”
