Managed Solutions Case Study
Pacific Cheese Reduces Transportation Spend by 13% with a Managed Solution
Managing logistics operations in-house is the easiest way to ensure that your supply chain feels like an extension of your brand, reflecting your values, culture, and integrity through final delivery. But as a company grows, that level of control—and quality—becomes harder to sustain. More volume means more carriers, more orders, more miles, and more complexity, pushing companies to analyze the most cost-effective way to manage their operations.
Pacific Cheese found itself at this exact position. A family-owned natural cheese company, Pacific Cheese is a renowned industry pioneer that has built its legacy through commitment to craftsmanship and hands-on expertise. By 2025, their footprint had expanded from California to an international network of suppliers and customers, including 3 domestic production facilities. Today, they supply cheese products for major retail brands as well as multiple of the top five fast food chains.
With accelerated growth came new challenges. Managing a multi-state network of facilities, partners, and customers demanded a new logistics operation with a modernized transportation strategy—one that could deliver efficiency, visibility, and scalability without compromising the quality and values the company was known for.
When you’re small, you can build it yourself. When you’re really large, you can buy a TMS, hire analysts, and pay for market intelligence. Pacific Cheese was caught in the middle of these two extremes. We’d grown too large and complex to self-manage in a cost-efficient way, but not large enough to justify the cost of all the people and tech to keep doing it in-house. With ITS, we get all the benefits, but only pay for what we use in technology, management, and thought leadership.
Through a managed transportation solution with ITS Logistics, Pacific Cheese modernized its supply chain, reduced overall spend by 13%, and gained the operational visibility and reliability needed to scale nationwide—without losing sight of the values and quality that built the company.
Key Takeaways
- Pacific Cheese saw a 13% reduction in overall transportation costs, including a 20% reduction in LTL spend, which they were able to pass along to customers either directly or through finished goods pricing.
- Establishing KPIs and benchmarks gave Pacific Cheese and ITS Logistics the chance to see where spend was misaligned with the market and set clear goals for improvement.
- The implementation of a formal TMS opened the door to greater communication and enhanced visibility between all partners and segments of the supply chain.
- ITS’s stack of carrier vetting and management technology allowed Pacific Cheese to instantly plug into modern, innovative tech tools without slowing down the RFP process.
Challenge
Between its three production facilities and expanding customer base, Pacific Cheese required a reliable, nationwide transportation strategy for shipping temperature-sensitive products. ITS sat down with Pacific Cheese’s in-house team to understand their current operations and goals.
Key challenges included:
- Limited carrier network: Pacific Cheese utilized a network of small brokers and independent owner-operators who, while having solid performance, lacked industry-leading tech stacks and benchmarking capabilities.
- Reefer market constraints: 100% refrigerated capacity made sourcing reliable carriers more challenging and costly than standard dry vans.
- Lack of data visibility: Pacific Cheese lacked cutting edge tools to benchmark costs or analyze operational efficiency.
- Fraud concerns: Industry-wide cargo theft trends heightened the need for stringent carrier vetting.
We embarked on a pretty ambitious path together—ITS integrating new elements of its service line and Pacific Cheese entrusting its logistics operations to a managed service provider after 50 years of managing them ourselves. We chose ITS because we saw an exciting partnership that could evolve over time, and they’ve more than delivered.
Solution
ITS integrated a dedicated managed transportation team to oversee Pacific Cheese’s domestic transportation, combining advanced technology with a data-driven approach to capacity sourcing and network design.
Efficiency Engineering
ITS started with a bird’s eye view of Pacific Cheese’s loads and delivery schedules to identify areas for improved utilization, with a specific focus on high-cost regions like the Pacific Northwest. By shifting delivery dates, ITS was able to convert a Reno-to-Oregon route from a one-way to a round-trip with significantly lower rates—cutting costs on that lane alone by 19%.
Going to RFP
After reviewing the current spread of transportation costs, ITS decided to take a majority of the business’ lanes to RFP on Pacific Cheese’s behalf. To streamline the process, ITS utilized its stack of carrier procurement technology, including GenLogs, DAT, and Highway, to identify ideal capacity and invite them to the RFP, ensuring every carrier in consideration met Pacific Cheese’s high standards for quality. With food and beverages being a major target in the growing freight fraud market, the tech stack also enables ongoing fraud mitigation processes like secured rate confirmation and identity monitoring.
By the conclusion of the RFP process, Pacific Cheese had an expanded carrier network that balanced cost-efficient new providers with proven incumbents who always went the extra mile for the brand. The values-driven approach to optimizing transportation spend ensures Pacific Cheese’s culture has a continued presence in its supply chain, building loyalty, consistency, and resilience that endures through market challenges.
Technology and Visibility
ITS implemented a customized transportation management system (TMS) to deliver real-time visibility, data analytics, and reporting to the Pacific Cheese team. The TMS, in conjunction with ITS’s proprietary Control Tower and Loop tracking software, integrates with Pacific Cheese’s tech stack, improving collaboration through seamless data sharing.
Our goal for Pacific Cheese was to help them adopt a technical, strategic, and operational approach that changes the mindset from ‘How do we move this load today?’ to ‘How can we increase the efficiency of our supply chain?'
Results
Since partnering with ITS, Pacific Cheese has seen their new strategies translate into measurable operational gains throughout its supply chain:
Cost Reduction and Efficiency Gains
- 13% reduction in transportation spend—a figure that continues to grow month over month.
- 19% lane-specific savings achieved by redesigning routes for optimal utilization.
- 20% reduction in overall LTL spend.
Improved Communication and Compliance
- A dedicated point of contact and standardized carrier communication reduced delays and strengthened driver relationships.
- Enhanced carrier vetting and compliance tracking improved reliability across the board.
- TMS centralized shipment tracking, analytics, and reporting, giving Pacific Cheese an organized, data-informed logistics operations across their entire supply chain.
My team has a very high bar for compliments, and they continually highlight how responsive, action-oriented, and accountable ITS is. They’ve become an integral part of our team.
See What Managed Solutions Can Do for You
Pacific Cheese’s collaboration with ITS Logistics transformed a legacy operation into the foundation for a modern, data-driven supply chain while preserving what matters most to their brand. With the right partner, growth doesn’t dilute your brand—it strengthens it through smarter processes, deeper visibility, and lasting efficiency.
If your logistics network is ready for its next stage of growth, ITS Logistics is ready to build a strategy that’s as strong—and as personal—as your brand.
Let us take it from here.
Reach out to our managed solutions team today.