Scalability: Dillon Transportation Grows With Innovative Access

Dillon Transportation has experienced significant fleet growth since its start in 1996 with one truck and two drivers. Owner Donnie Dillon founded his dry van transportation company in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee–just outside of Nashville–with a dream of moving freight for his customers and, of course, business success. Today the truckload carrier retains its roots in the Volunteer State and has expanded to Arizona. The company operates with 170 drivers and crew members alongside its 125-truck fleet.
 

The Challenge

While business relationships were important, Donnie Dillon’s fleet reached a point where he could no longer remember every truck driver’s name or every truck. 

“When I had 25 or 30, you could ask me to give you a truck number and I could tell you who’s driving it, and what they were doing,” he said. “But, it got to where I couldn’t remember all that. It was a little bit much.”

Growing at an exponential rate, Dillon Transportation needed a more sophisticated way of storing its information about drivers and loads. The company needed a way for employees to access the specifics of each and every trip that Donnie Dillion had previously kept in his head. It was time to explore the benefits of securing a transportation management system.

The Solution

Enter Innovative Access from Trimble Transportation.

With the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, Dillon and his team found full visibility into driver performance and freight movement. Using Innovative Access helped to streamline the company’s processes, too. Among the valuable benefits, three were favored and key in day-to-day operations. Specifically, the carrier was given the ability to calculate fuel taxes by creating reports used for fuel tax reimbursements and payment; forecast late deliveries; and push day-of-delivery billing by calculating billing amounts then producing invoices for orders and miscellaneous charges. 

Dillon said the implementation of the software couldn’t have been any better or gone any smoother; staying both in scope and budget. Trimble staff members were and remain responsive and patient as he and the Dillon Transportation crew learned the new software.

The Results

The TMS works to keep business moving forward and it allows for tracking of progress in an instant.

Dillon Transportation reports it has reaped considerable time savings, cost savings and growth in its fleet since it started using Innovative Access. In fact, the company upgraded to Innovative Access Plus for even more benefits from a powerful and robust TMS platform. The move provided the company with the chance to use additional modules, as needed,  to grow including:

Having a system that can monitor the trucks while providing up-to-date information in real-time on all changes or issues has helped the company financially. It has also helped Donnie Dillion grow his fleet with an additional 80 trucks, and he’s waiting on 30 more trucks currently held up in the supply chain.

“We couldn’t have done any of that without the software,” he said. 

“As long as I have that computer with me with that software, I can be in Egypt and I know what's going on. And it doesn’t take me long,” he said. “I can tell because if they [drivers] are late it tells me. If there are things not working it tells me things aren’t working. That lets me keep my arms around what’s going on so much better than the days when I wanted to know something and I had to ask someone or look at a file. It’s just easier.”

“With Innovative Access Plus it’s very simple. There’s paperwork I don’t have anymore. Customers send in the information….. Everything comes in electronically and so it’s really great. I don’t know what I would do without it.”

— Donnie Dillon, Owner, Dillon Transportation