A driver behavior fix worth an estimated $30M — before any new technology was purchased.
Last-mile propane delivery carried the highest cost and the most operational risk in the business. The fix wasn't a new routing platform — it was understanding why drivers were running early.
The highest-cost, highest-risk part of the business — and no one could say exactly why.
The company was looking for significant cost savings across the board, but last-mile deliveries stood out as both the most expensive part of the operation and the most critical risk to the business's health. Before recommending new routing software or delivery technology, the real question was behavioral: what was actually driving the cost per gallon delivered, and was it a routing problem or a driver behavior problem?
A driver efficiency model, not a new piece of software.
Rather than starting with a technology purchase, we built a data model to analyze driver-level delivery patterns and isolate the specific behavior driving cost — drivers running deliveries earlier than necessary, which increased mileage, fuel use, and risk exposure without improving service. Modeling the cost impact of that single behavior made the case for a targeted fix instead of a broad technology overhaul.
Cutting early deliveries in half was worth more than any software purchase would have been.
Reducing early deliveries by 50% alone was estimated to be worth roughly $30 million in value to the business — a number reached by fixing a specific, identified behavior rather than layering new technology on top of a process nobody had actually diagnosed yet.
Got a process that's costing more than it should?
The fix usually isn't the tool everyone assumes it is. Let's find out what's actually driving the cost first.
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