2022 Shipper of Choice Profile: The Boston Beer Company

Presented by FreightWaves, in partnership with TriumphPay, the Shipper of Choice award recognizes the manufacturers, distributors and retailers who do the best job of keeping the American economy moving by fighting driver detention, providing accessible facilities and understanding what it takes to remove inefficiencies from the supply chain.

Among the Top 25 Shippers of Choice for 2022 is … Boston Beer.

About Boston Beer

Nomination notes for Boston Beer

Kicking off 2022’s FreightWaves Shipper of Choice nominees is Boston Beer, but you might know it better as the company that makes brands like Samuel Adams, Dogfish Head, Twisted Tea and Truly hard seltzer. Boston Beer (NYSE: SAM) was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, who quickly grew the business into one of the American beer industry’s powerhouses.

Boston Beer is a busy brewery. In the first quarter of 2022 alone, the company shipped 1.7 million barrels of beer — that’s more than 50 million gallons. And that’s a quarter less than it shipped during the same period in 2021.

Boston Beer is unique among American breweries because of its decentralized value chain, which leverages a chain of contract brewers. By decentralizing its operations, the company has managed to sell nationwide while saving on shipping costs. But when it does need to move product, Boston Beer’s carrier partners consider it a shipper of choice

“Boston Beer is the ideal customer in my opinion,” said Parker Widmann, sales manager at Cargobarn, which nominated the brewery as a Shipper of Choice. “From the top down they are very organized in their approach and incredibly responsive when issues arise.”

Watch: Partnerships and integrations, the key to building an efficient supply chain

Widmann emphasized Boston Beer’s issue resolution time as one of the main reasons for his nomination. He also mentioned fondness for the brewery’s transparency of process and its relationship-based method of managing carrier partners. And of course, Widmann added that the company is a quick shipper.

“They truly look for carrier partners to build lasting relationships with and value service and communication over pretty much anything,” he said. “We have seen their business grow and new lanes open up in our time together and it is a true reflection of the hard work that their logistics team puts in day in and day out.”

Michael Ventura, transportation buyer at Boston Beer, emphasized that building meaningful relationships with carrier partners is of the utmost importance for the brewery: “At Boston Beer we work hard to serve our retail and wholesaler customers as well as our drinkers. This has driven us closer to our carrier partners as well.

“During the recent trying times in the freight world, we have focused on building our relationships with carriers — reducing dwell time, providing a friendly environment for carrier partners, building strong relationships to understand partner need and reducing complexity,” he added. “As Boston Beer continues to grow, we continue investing in our people, systems and infrastructure to move our operations forward.”

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Source: freightwaves - 2022 Shipper of Choice Profile: The Boston Beer Company
Editor: Jack Daleo