This is one company that has service in the bag—and more.  Despite its name, the Eastern Bag and Paper Group today has grown well beyond its original scope as a distributor of paper and packaging products.  Since its founding in 1918, the company has become one of the largest distributors of commercial paper products in the Northeast—as well as a spectrum of allied products that serve the needs of industrial, food service, health care, and janitorial service customers.

In janitorial and maintenance products, Eastern Bag provides a one-stop source for all cleaning supplies, equipment, training, and service. In health care products, products range from cleaning and disposables to housekeeping support and office paper.  Food service customers can access a “supermarket” of product choices, such as dining service, flatware, and kitchen tools.  And, Eastern Bag’s industrial line includes protective packaging, strapping, tapes, and of course, bags.

Just as remarkable is Eastern Bag’s growing service reach. The company’s East Coast territory currently reaches from Northern Virginia to Maine, encompassing all of New England as well as most of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore-Washington area.  From its four locations (including a new 125,000 square-foot warehouse in Hamilton, NJ and a cross-docking facility in Herndon, VA), Eastern Bag’s fleet of 70 trucks cover 65 dynamic routes daily, serving 9,000 customers that range in size from “mom ‘n pop” pizza parlors to huge nursing home companies. In addition, the company’s other division, Distributor Supply Corporation, delivers products to smaller redistributors that don’t have Eastern Bag’s buying power. 

Even with this enviable track record, what Eastern Bag has not outgrown is an old-fashioned dedication to service.  According to the company’s Corporate Transportation Manager Antonio Brown, “I tell our drivers, we don’t manufacture anything at Eastern Bag—we don’t make any paper towels or cleaning supplies.  So the only thing we can offer our customers is great service.”

To ensure that that they could deliver on this commitment, Brown and his team turned to UPS Logistics Technologies in 2003, implementing Roadnet®, MobileCast®, and Roadnet Info Center® throughout the company.  While he had reviewed solutions from other companies, Brown says the choice was an  easy one.  “By far, UPS Logistics Technologies had the most comprehensive system that fit our operation to a T,” he says. “The most unique thing about them is that you can be literally any kind of industry and they have a way to cater to your needs by providing a solution that works for your particular business—so that you don’t have to change the way you work.”

Right away, Eastern Bag began to see measurable results from their deployment of the three products, according to Brown.  The company saw a 50% reduction in route planning time through optimized routing with Roadnet, while driver overtime decreased by 15% in the first year alone.  At the same time, MobileCast allowed the company to streamline and integrate their field communications with their routing system for the first time.  “MobileCast gave our routing more precision by having our drivers geocode each stop with their handheld devices,” says Brown. “It also gave us driver accountability.  We want our drivers to have enough time to complete their routes as safely and as efficiently as possible.  With MobileCast, they can.”

In terms of improvements to customer service, Brown sees Roadnet Info Center also playing a key role.  By employing Roadnet Info Center’s real-time route information and tools to manage by exception, the company’s customer service representatives are able to be more proactive than ever before.  “By being able to see the progress of a route, our CSRs can see any potential problems and call our customers in advance, which in turn impresses them with our level of service,” says Brown.  Roadnet Info Center provides additional savings by eliminating lost productivity due to redundant phone calls back and forth between CSRs, dispatchers, and drivers, he notes.

“In the culture of the transportation era we’re now in, it just makes sense to go with a company that offers proven results,” says Brown.  “Our results here at Eastern Bag and Paper speak for themselves.  But I think that any company can achieve these same results with UPS Logistics Technologies.”