In order to build rail cars, you need rail car components on-site. And in 1995, Gunderson’s traffic management partnered with IDI to get those components from their vendors in the Central and Eastern regions of the United States to their manufacturing facilities in Portland, Oregon.

Since the parts are generally heavy and over-sized, we focused on intermodal, transporting in both marine and domestic rail containers that can be delivered directly to their factory by train. By having IDI handle the logistics, the traffic management department at Gunderson is able to use the time to focus on other aspects of production.

IDI account managers communicate daily with the logistics group to coordinate the lowest cost option based on time sensitivity of the shipment. Shipment status is updated multiple times per day. All of this information is available in a dedicated web trace to logistics and production.