Nestlé USA — Automating Carrier Outreach Across Nearly 95% of External Shipments with Tracy

Nestlé USA has been a FourKites customer since 2017 and has improved tracking and on-time performance over the years, but follow-up on exceptions was still limited by how much time its coordinators had available.

Before Tracy, carrier communication at Nestlé USA was time consuming and mostly manual for human team members. Senior coordinators watched for exceptions, called or emailed carriers about late pickups and deliveries, and then entered the results into the team's operational visibility tool by hand. There was also no practical way to manage asset assignment ahead of time.

The gaps showed up in service performance at the two pilot sites, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Laporte, Texas. Those misses had financial consequences elsewhere in the network. Chronic service-level breaches were driving layover charges, and carriers that kept missing orders were placed on formal performance action plans.

The outreach itself added friction. Carriers sometimes received duplicate or confusing messages about the same load, and coordinators had no way to confirm whether anyone had already contacted a carrier. That inconsistency strained the carrier relationships Nestlé USA depends on, and the team needed follow-up that was consistent, automatic and recorded.

Nestlé USA deployed Tracy to run a simple loop of detecting an exception, contacting the carrier and escalating when needed. The loop runs through three notification types, Asset Not Assigned, Late Pickup Reminder and Late Delivery Reminder, each tied to a specific trigger and routed to the right party automatically. Tracy's core value comes from that loop being simple and consistent.

Exceptions now follow a firm two-hour escalation service level, so a coordinator is pulled in only after that window, which replaced an ad hoc follow-up process. Outbound reminders and inbound carrier responses log automatically into SAP OVT through an IDOC, so the audit trail no longer depends on manual entry. The team also uses exception and response data by workflow, origin and carrier to keep tuning where follow-up is needed.

The Late Delivery workflow started as internal-only. Nestlé USA is now building a purpose-specific version for one top customer, with direct notification to its top customers planned as a second phase.

In the first four weeks of the pilot, on-time pickup at Laporte improved by 10 percentage points. At Jonesboro, on-time delivery improved by 8 percentage points and on-time pickup improved by 6. Tracy now handles carrier outreach on nearly 95% of Nestlé USA’s external customer shipments.

As of Q3 2026, Tracy has generated more than 23,000 automated carrier outreach emails in a single month without coordinator effort. Coordinator queues now hold only true exceptions, with false positives eliminated, and coordinators have noted how many loads Tracy works through without planner intervention. The automated audit trail also supports carrier performance conversations, including action plans for underperforming carriers tied to major retail accounts.