Some companies strive to take inventory out of the distribution chain as a way to squeeze cost from production and marketing. Allen Family Foods in Seaford, Delaware, strives to take time out of the delivery cycle in order to give customers an average of one extra day of shelf life for its processed poultry.
Allen places great emphasis on supplying fresh, ice-packed poultry to wholesalers and independent store chains in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states from North Carolina to Maine. The company, one of about 50 vertically integrated processors, ranks about 15th on a list of the largest poultry houses in the country. That list begins with Tyson and includes Pilgrim's Pride and Perdue before it gets to Allen Family Foods. However, the company is the largest producer of ice-packed poultry for the Northeastern corridor.
Although not as big as some of its major competitors, Allen has a long history in Delaware and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The company was founded by Clarence and Nellie Allen in 1919 as a hatchery raising chicks for subsequent egg production. The successor to that company still operates as Allen's Hatchery Inc. Allen Family Foods, an offshoot of the original company, was formed as a poultry distributor in the years immediately following World War II. The first processing plant was built in 1971, and the company began operating its own fleet and maintenance departments in 1986.
With 1,800 employees, Allen Family Foods processes roughly 2.5 million birds a week, about 10 million pounds. Annual production totals 500 million pounds. The company entered the export markets in 1989, and by 1996 was selling 100 million pounds of poultry annually to customers as far away as Hong Kong.
In export markets as well as at home, Allen Family Foods seeks niches to complement its domestic business. For instance, company research shows that European consumers want the dark meat portions of chicken, the legs and thighs. US consumers have a preference for the white breast meat. Until the poultry market in Russia began to experience considerable weakness, these two consumer preferences played directly to the strength of the Allen strategy.
Allen Family Foods is housed in a building that once served as the Allen family home in Seaford. It is headquarters only; all processing takes place in three plants located in surrounding communities. The plant in Cordova, Maryland, produces whole birds and is home to the fleet and maintenance departments. Chicken parts and boned breasts are the primary production of the plant in Harbeson, Delaware. The third plant, in Hurlock, Maryland, produces large birds, chicken parts, and quarters. All three plants and the headquarters are within 50 miles of one another.
500-mile service radius
The company serves a trade area with a radius of roughly 500 miles around Seaford. The distribution range for the company fleet stretches from Charlotte, North Carolina, in the south to Cleveland, Ohio, in the west to Portland, Maine in the north. Inside this rough half circle, almost 60% of company volume delivers in the metropolitan areas of New Jersey and New York. Beyond the 500-mile range, the company serves its receivers with for-hire carriers.
Allen Family Foods uses what its president Charles C Allen III calls rolling distribution. The company has no fixed central distribution center. Each of the three processing plants assembles loads and dispatches delivery routes. In general, the majority of the product in a load comes from the dispatching center. Product needed to fill out those loads is shifted among the three plants by a fleet of six tractors and trailers dedicated to inter-plant transfers. Between 3 am and 3 pm each day, the six transfer trucks move an average of 55,000 to 65,000 boxes of poultry.
It is this mobile distribution strategy that saves shelf life for customers, says Clifton Hicklin, Allen's director of transportation. Moving product from the three processing plants to a central distribution center for consolidation and loading would add a minimum of one day to the delivery process, he says. By delivering directly from the processing plants, Allen Family Foods can give that extra day of shelf life to its customers, providing them additional time to sell product that has an average shelf life of 14 days. “If our customers get poultry that is two to three days old, we're providing old product,” Hicklin says. “A majority of what we sell arrives at the customer less than a day after processing.”
Many same-day deliveries
The sales staff works from Seaford, beginning the day at 7:30 am. Orders taken through the day are shipped the same afternoon. Sixty to 70% of today's orders are at the customer by the following morning with some arriving as soon as late afternoon the same day the order was taken, Hicklin says. Most delivery routes hit the streets between 6 and 7 pm.
Repetitive orders help make the short processing and delivery cycle possible. Deliveries of the same usual size go to the same receivers week after week. Earliest route departures are scheduled for the longest routes. Loads for Portland dispatch around 2 pm for delivery the next morning at 8 am. Those loads require a 10-hour drive followed by an eight-hour break and another 10 hours back to the plant. Pittsburgh requires a seven-hour drive, and nine hours are required to reach customers in Cleveland. In both cases, drivers must take a mandatory break before returning home. Routes to New Jersey and New York are much shorter with a four-hour trip to New York extended an additional hour if the delivery is on Long Island. Drivers with New York runs return to base the same day.
Multi-stop routes
Allen Family Foods sells by the pallet with a four-pallet minimum. This results in a large number of multi-stop routes. Most require only two stops, and the maximum seems to be three stops, Hicklin says. Nearly all stops are dock delivery. Street level delivery is still found only at some of the older facilities in New York. “At those stops, the customer will hook a chain to the pallet and pull it to the rear of the trailer where it can be reached with a fork truck,” he says. “Such stops are not much slower than dock delivery and no harder on the driver. With ice-packed poultry, we don't handle freight by hand.”
As with any poultry processor, Allen Family Foods needs a fleet to support operations as well as deliver finished product. The company runs 118 tractors and 216 trailers, including 90 refrigerated trailers. The remainder of the trailer fleet is dedicated to such things as chicken feed transport to growers, flatbed trailers with cages for live bird transport from farms to the plants, and some general agricultural equipment hauling.
The refrigerated trailers are sized specifically for Allen's product. With loads concentrating on ice-packed poultry, freight is weight critical rather than cube critical. As a result, the company purchases trailers only 46 ft 6 inches long and 96 inches wide. With pallets positioned fore-to-aft along the long axis, trailers will hold 22 pallets comfortably within the 91-inch-wide load space. When the entire load is ice-packed product, trailers reach maximum weight with only 18 pallets.
Hicklin says that Allen Family Foods simply does not need 53-ft trailers, so it doesn't buy them. Putting an ice-packed poultry load in a conventional truckload refrigerated trailer would leave almost eight feet of empty space at the back of the trailer, he says. “In addition to handling the weight critical loads, our shorter trailers make delivery in urban environments a little easier,” Hicklin says.
The refrigerated trailer fleet is an almost equal split between Great Dane and Utility. They are built with four inches of insulation in the front wall, 2½ inches in the sidewalls, and three inches in the floor, roof, and rear doors. Although built in many ways like typical truckload freight trailers, Allen Family Foods tailors some of its specifications to its product line. For instance, floors are flat extruded aluminum so that pallets can slide for street level delivery. In addition, flat floors are less likely to absorb moisture from ice melting in the poultry cartons.
Handling runoff water
Handling runoff water from loads is a priority. Trailers are built with four floor drains immediately inside the rear threshold, one in each corner plus two more equally spaced across the opening. Some of the trailers were originally built with two drains at the front wall as well, but these have been plugged. “Drivers don't like to see poultry juice dripping out of the trailers onto their tractor quarter fenders,” Hicklin says. “For that same reason, our trailers are built with stainless steel rear frames and stainless steel bumpers.”
In fact, the fluid content of poultry loads is a major factor in trailer life, he says. Allen Family Foods plans for a 10-year trailer life. Poultry juice and wash water is hard on equipment, especially once it begins to work its way into the insulation, Hicklin says. Both are a constant in the Allen operation. Ice in the cartons is intended to melt, helping retain proper moisture levels in the product. Trailer interiors are washed constantly; company procedure requires that they be washed at the dock every time before loading.
The refrigeration unit mix at Allen Family Foods is split almost as equally as the trailer builder mix. Hicklin says that the company began buying Carrier Transicold units in 1997 and now has 48 in the fleet. Carrier Transicold units are a mix of Ultra and Extra systems. The most recent purchase was a group of eight Extra XT units, from Carrier's recently introduced X-series for upgraded performance. The remaining 42 are Thermo King Super II units. Depending on fleet needs, eight to 17 trailers and units are purchased annually.
The entire fleet is equipped with R-404A in refrigeration units. With ice in the cartons, refrigeration units are not required to work exceptionally hard. The thermostats are set for 28° F with the intent that temperature remains in the mid-30s even following a door opening. The one concern is efficient defrost. With ice-packed product held at the lower end of the medium temperature spectrum, units defrost fairly frequently. That defrost cycle needs to be efficient without adding warmth to the trailers.
Tractors in the dressed poultry division of the fleet, those used for delivery, would make any owner-operator or small fleet manager proud. Allen Family Foods runs Freightliner Classic XL tractors with Detroit Diesel engines with horsepower up to 500. Set up as owner-operator tractors throughout, they have 10- or 13-speed transmissions and 70-inch raised roof sleepers.
The entire goal of the Allen fleet is to delivery high quality poultry on time in the proper condition. The goal is 100% on-time delivery, and the fleet performs at a 99.2% to 99.4% on-time rate month after month, Hicklin says.
Providing such service is the only reason for the fleet. “We're not in the trucking business because we want to be, but because we have to be,” says Charles Allen, president.
