LoadProof Video Testimonial – Bill Valente, G3 Enterprises

“Quite a long time! How are you doing?”

“I’m doing alright, thanks for taking the time to join this call.”

“Of course! You know, the analogy I use is that we make race cars, and you guys get to drive them. We don’t get to drive them, so it’s always exciting to hear about the performance and how it’s working out. Is there anything we can do better? You can share both positive and negative feedback; we’re always looking for opportunities to improve the product and user experience. At the end of the day, our mission is to make life easier for supply chain operators.”

“Absolutely! I definitely want to start with positive feedback. I don’t have any negatives; I have some suggestions or ideas that could help us down the road. Starting with the positives, as an organization, we’ve been very happy with Load Proof. We have it set up at multiple sites. Some are campus-based models, while others are individual warehouses operating forward from our normal supply chain. In each case, user feedback is that the app is very easy to use. On the PC side, it’s incredibly easy to search by load number, seal number, container number, or whatever they’re looking for.”

“The user interface has no big opportunities for improvement. We use it today not so much for cost savings but as a differentiator with our customers. When we approach new businesses, we say, ‘These are the services we offer. By the way, part of our supply chain is that we document all of our inbound and outbound loads.’ This means they have access to signed bills of lading, container numbers, and images of how containers, trailers, or rail cars departed and arrived. The feedback from customers has been phenomenal.”

“Great! So, G3 Enterprises is a 3PL that specializes in the wine industry, right? I’ve heard about ‘grape to glass’—you do pretty much everything for wine businesses.”

“Yes and no. We started with the wine business as part of Gallo Winery a long time ago. Now, there are three companies in the Gallo family: Gallo Winery, which makes the wine; Gallo Glass, which makes the glass bottles; and G3, which is the supply chain arm. We have a manufacturing division that makes labels, closures, and even prints on corks. Our logistics division handles all movements—not just finished goods but also raw materials. For example, we have about 2,000 grape trailers moving grapes between Gallo facilities and 50 or 60 tankers moving liquid wine between crush and bottling facilities.”

“There’s a huge suite of services across the supply chain that Gallo doesn’t handle directly but G3 offers to close the gap. Because we’re a separate company, we can buy and sell with competitors to Gallo. We work with several other wineries, like Constellation Brands, Naked Wines, and Firstleaf, among others. Most of our facilities are dedicated to either Gallo or non-Gallo businesses, with only a few exceptions.”

“The non-Gallo side of the business predominantly uses Load Proof as we continue to grow. In addition to wine, we work with other commodities, such as Del Monte canned fruits and vegetables. We’re also negotiating contracts with Hawaiian Springs water and potentially Fiji Water.”

“The original reason we got involved with Load Proof was for Fona, which ships dried milk powder in large super sacks. They had quality assurance requests early in the process and wanted to see pictures of their loads at both receiving and shipping points. Now, we utilize Load Proof for everything, and our portfolio continues to expand beyond just the wine industry. We like to say it covers the beverage and food industry because it’s not just wine anymore.”

“Most of our distribution strength is based on rail. We are the second-largest customer of BNSF nationally and among the top five for Union Pacific as well. We ship a ton of rail cars around the U.S. Wine, being a heavy commodity due to glass bottles, lends itself well to rail transport.”

“Easily, as opposed to trucks, where you can fit roughly four truckloads into a rail car. Sometimes, the truck side is still too heavy, especially with wine, where you’re constantly getting to the top end of the weight spectrum. For rail, I want to say it’s about 250,000 pounds, give or take, for a rail car that you can ship. It’s quite a bit.”

“So, one of the areas we’re starting to use Load Proof quite a bit is as we load rail cars. We load four pallets in, two side by side and two top to bottom, which totals four. We’ll load four, put the dunnage or airbag in, take a photo, then load four more, add dunnage and airbags, and take another photo, and so on. By the end of the rail car, when it’s fully loaded, we’ll have 20, 22, or 24 photos. It’s perfect. At the destination, if there’s any shifting or damage, we can refer back to every layer and see where things went wrong, whether it was our fault or something the rail lines did, and then file a claim accordingly.”

“What has been the right feedback from your vertical? I’ll share a quick story. One day, I was buying stuff from Costco. I picked up a popular Rosé and asked the lady at the counter how often it breaks. She said, ‘Oh, this doesn’t break much.’ It dawned on me then how challenging it can be.”

“What are the challenges specific to this vertical that you guys have with rail, specifically with wine? It’s shifting. Rail cars will often, if you’re shipping from the West Coast to the East Coast, typically go south through Arizona and New Mexico to get around the mountains. You might ship 10 rail cars a day, but instead of each location always having 10 rail cars, they bunch up in Arizona, where you’ll get 80, 90, or 100 rail cars. They’ll pull those together. Every time they bunch during their journey, there are instances where rail cars are crammed together quickly.”

“That’s how they connect them in their yards; they might have four or five cars from customer A and four or five from B and C, all going to the same place. They’ll chain them together. The process of connecting them is referred to in the industry as ‘humping.’ They literally ram five cars right into the next five, which can cause shifting. If you don’t have the right blocking and bracing, that’s where you get the damage.”

“So, you guys are trying to prevent the damage caused by the humping, right? Yes. We have very little control over the rail yards and how they behave. The class one railroads are huge and organized, so we can’t change their behavior in their yards. However, we document clearly how we loaded and the standard we loaded to. Since the railroad has approved that standard, if there’s any damage, it’s on them to cover it. This approach has been moderately successful.”

“So, you guys file claims with BNSF or Union Pacific, right? Yes, that’s correct. It’s not frequent, but we’ve learned how to block and brace the rail cars to minimize damage. Even if they are impacted, there are other tricks we can use. For instance, we can put impact sensors on the vehicles and GPS tracking. There are various methods we can use to request credits from the rail line, showing that not only do we have damage, but we also loaded to their standards, have photo documentation, and can provide data from the shock sensors indicating the force of impacts.”

“You can also improve the packing, right? But there’s a cost versus benefit consideration. You need to manage that balance; there’s no point in overspending on packing if it ends up costing more than managing the whole process.”

“That’s an interesting challenge with the rail cars. Now, with the photos, you’re able to have a better conversation. Another customer of ours has a very similar challenge. With rail cars, you typically have only two or three options for carriers, not like with trucks where you can call 10 or 20 carriers. With rail, there’s usually only one option. The class one railroads cover different parts of the country, so there’s very little overlap. If you want to ship from here to Chicago, you really have one or maybe two choices.”

“The class one is for the weight and density, right? Yes, it’s tied to their weight and what they can handle. Typically, there are five or six class one railroads in the U.S. They cover the four quadrants: northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest, with some overlap. Those class one railroads handle the long hauls of the rail cars, but when it gets to Chicago or Memphis or wherever it’s going, there’s usually a short line railroad that shuttles rail cars to individual warehouses that are rail-served.”

“So, the major railroads deal with long hauls, while these short lines take care of the smaller deliveries. Got it. What are some opportunities for improvement, or what can we do better for you guys?”

“I think there are a couple of small enhancements to consider. They’re not gaps, but they would be helpful. Right now, we send automated emails to customers saying, ‘Hey, this load shipped; here’s your email with a link to see the photos.’ It would be beneficial to have some of those fields customizable or have the subject line editable. I’ve tried using the metadata to have the load number or order number appear in the subject line, but it doesn’t always work as expected. Some added functionality there would be appreciated.”

“One other option for warehouse users is that if we have a warehouse with, say, 10 customers, to send the email automatically, they have to scroll down a list where they input the load number, seal number, or whatever. After taking all the photos, they need to find the right customer in that long list. It would streamline things to allow easier navigation for users who have multiple customers to deal with.”

customer if that makes sense the yeah yeah that makes sense way we’ve sent it up yeah yeah I mean there is also a um not sure if you folks learned about this there is also a new customer ID that you can uh you know configure um oh yeah yeah there is a customer Master customer ID that you can configure and then associate email addresses with that and then you can choose it just choose that and then it’ll send that email to that customer uh you know um oh that would be phenomenal yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah I mean you know when when you folks have some and having said that bill those two announcement I would definitely work with the team and maybe you know schedule a call letter quick call so that uh we can even improve and take advantage of the more capabilities that we have developed in the recent months as well yeah that would be phenomenal I appreciate that ship thank you I didn’t yeah I wasn’t aware that you know that I know we’ve been asking for that for a while so I’m glad to hear that’s an enhancement that’s come through yeah yeah yeah outstanding um one other question around enhancement so we are in the process of launching a customer portal um where our customers can log in they have access to our WMS our warehouse management system for inventory for order entry for all of that kind of stuff their invoices um additionally it gives them access to our TMS system our transportation management system they can see their load it connects to for kites which is our GPS tool so they see y yep all the stuff I would absolutely love if there is a way to then whether we use order number or load number but to take a common field add a link exactly to yeah to where they could they could click on and say hey I shipped order 123 I know that it’s left y I want to track it and I want to click a button or a tab and it will whether embedded is even better but if not if it just then takes you to load proof and says and by the way here are photos of the signed bill of lading the seal the load as it left you know whatever we took photos of um any type I don’t know even what level of integration you as a company offer um but if that’s potentially an option it would be a massive win for us and our customers we have we have a lot of integration opportunities we have apis that we what what syst system that this whole customer portal is built on uh I think it’s between API and EDI we have both configured depending on from a connection standpoint I can go back and ask the IT team correct we can we can provide apis and if there’s like a you know we actually this is pretty common among the 3pl that we’ve seen other 3pls do the same thing where you know they provide that portal that’s built and all information coming from right WMMS and even load proof we have done this before and we can provide apis and you guys can integrate it pretty fast so wherein you know they log into that their portal and then they can look at their orders and then click you know a link and then that opens that you know load prooof like how it does it in an email but we have done also bill is like you know many workflow management software or any other tool what we do is once they log in we’ll have a link associated with the common factor you mentioned maybe it’s order number or any different ID you just need a common parameter and it will show up a link where clicking on that will open up a different page a view page where they can even print and see the photos of the order that they’re looking for so visibility is that would be phenomenal um sh when it’s time to we’re probably not far off few weeks a month or so um from having some of those conversations who’s the is it would it be you to have them connect with um I can do introductions or is it somebody else on your team so I would be uh I would initiate the discussions I also have one of the members from our Tech Team join the call and once have gather all the initial requirements then I know we will come up with all the surroundings and see when we can have have the solutions ready for the team that’d be phenomenal yeah that’ be a huge win that would be nice yeah last uh idea or thought um is there if we did eventually have integration with say our our internal WMS um would there be an option to where an operator instead of opening load prooof on their phone taking the photos there’s an inbound right or there’s an outbound or whatever it is and they take photos and they associate all the fields could you do it the opposite way is there a model where the operator could open their phone up and it would say you have these three inbounds for this building schedule today and I already have all of the metadata pre-populated because I’m connected yep which one of these are you receiving and the operator clicks it and just takes photos and hits submit and they don’t have to enter anything it’s more system driven rather than the operator driven correct yeah so we got an idea yeah no no that’s a great we we we have kind of you know getting that feedback now as well it’s like it’s like hey you know push the loads from WMS into load prooof and then the system drives the user rather than the user you know deciding I mean the benefit with that is right when the system drives you can hold the user accountable saying that hey did you make sure you captured pictures of all the loads that were you know created in the WMS right we we currently have an internal audit but we’re we’re only doing it you know once a week or so where myself or another warehouse manager will go through and they will pick loads at random yeah and say hey I I want to make sure a that we have the bill of lading and all the documentation signed or stamped I want to see that it was received correctly in the WMS that everything matches and I want to see the load prooof photos that they match um but to your point it would be so much better to be able to look at a report or on a dashboard and say I had 100 orders this month and I took photos on 95 of them and then be able to go to the operator for the other five and say what happened why was this a miss our customer expects 100% photos so yeah I I know that it’s very early days and that might be you know a development idea down the road but that’s a that’s a great idea what is your WMS we have sofon today sofon okay we can start a conversation so basically what that means is that we got to have this WMS integrated with load prooof where they push a button in sofon the loads get downloaded into load prooof and then we capture you know system driven from that point onwards it’s you know the user you know the US it shows up for the user and he just uses the load you know takes photos and then ties it to the load and then you know that’s all in the cloud and that’s also integrated with softon from softon they can click and see the um photos in load Prof that’s a that’s a yeah I mean that’s a very you know we can we can see if I know if if uh if um we can maybe initiate a conversation maybe you know when when we’re trying to do stuff like this it’s much more easier to have a customer you know come in and say Hey you know this would benefit if you guys build this integration you know we can we can uh see how we can make that happen yeah and if you need somebody to be the guinea pig to be the test case we are more than happy to serve um I just started the role that I’m in now a couple weeks ago okay so I now um from a business standpoint I own all Warehouse Systems and compliance so this is very much my world going forward okay um I could represent the business with any of these conversations um and we we as a company because we’re continuing to grow um we’re we’re getting bigger very quickly we have a lot Our IT team has been incredibly busy with integration between sofon between our TMS which is Oracle okay um and between you know this customer portal and any of these other integration points with customers we we’re starting to move away from manual order entry and all that kind of stuff with a customer service team to having full EDI or API Integrations with every customer so all inbounds and outbounds are pre-built inventory is readily available it’s we’re we’re we’re trying to get to the 21st century we’re getting close yeah yeah nice I so that Eda with all the retailers like you know everybody okay Walmart you know Costco all those guys yeah it’s it’s turning out to be a massive Time Savings um my challenge now is that I have to go into sofon and a few other systems and clean up old data that you know nobody Clos an order out or nobody closed something out um but again my cross to bear not yours so yeah um yeah load prooof continues to be a huge piece of our business model as we you know try to win new business and the stuff in the past where myself or Stephen have said hey you know we’d really like this feature we’d like that sure enough it seems to come out you know down the road at some point in enhancement so yeah I appreciate you listening to the feedback and entertaining it and you know if there’s an opportunity to work it into your model and it helps other customers as well we’re we’re more than happy to help you know build that out for you okay great fantastic we’ll see how we can you know initiate a conversation with sofon that’ll be nice to have you know it’ll be system driven uh and if we need to do it as well um the the focus now is getting load prooof into the customer portal that would be phenomenal okay um but having sofon push some of that stuff uh into load proof um again when we’re ready for that kind of a conversation I’m more than happy to to pair you up it’s it’s a larger company we were um our it team and myself were just out of there um they had a conference in Virginia uh last week actually we were both just out there okay um so we you know met with them and talk through some of these great ideas so they have a team ready to go on standby for it um I know they would love to talk to you so all in all good stuff excellent well thanks for your time and let me know when you’re ready to have the initial call with my tech folks um and I will just take the lead on that yeah absolutely sounds great I’m looking forward to it have a great rest of your day you too take care