How C&S Fasteners Digitized Their Freight, Starting at The Dock

Company Background

C&S Fasteners is a Florida-based distributor of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, and specialty fasteners, including imported product tailored to the patio and fencing industries it serves, such as pool enclosure manufacturers. Shipping from a single location, the team sends palletized LTL shipments and small parcel shipments to customers across fourteen states, covering most of the country east of the Mississippi as well as Texas and Oklahoma.

The Challenge

Before MyCarrier, C&S Fasteners quoted shipments by checking three or four separate carrier websites, since rates and transit times varied by lane and carrier. That meant entering the same shipment details multiple times just to compare options, and pulling shipment history together for carrier conversations meant digging through separate systems and reconciling everything by hand in Excel.

On the dock, pallet dimensions were captured with a tape measure, written down by hand, and keyed into the system afterward. With several pallets moving through the warehouse at once, numbers occasionally got mixed up. Mismatched dimensions and weights sometimes led to reweighs and reclasses down the line, and a shipment without a clear label could show up days later with no easy way to trace where it belonged.

The Solution

C&S Fasteners has shipped with MyCarrier since April 2023, replacing its rotation of carrier websites with one platform for quoting, booking, and managing shipments. When Dockware mobile dimensioning entered its beta program, the team tried it out on a single tablet, a low-risk way to see whether mobile dimensioning could replace their manual process. Dockware now digitizes the process right at the dock, capturing certified pallet dimensions, weight, and photos, then syncing that shipment data directly into MyCarrier.

The Results

Centralized quoting and real carrier data

With every carrier in one place, C&S Fasteners can pull shipment history and rates in minutes instead of piecing them together from multiple systems. That data has also strengthened carrier relationships. When Southeastern Freight Lines asked for recent shipment data to review its pricing, the team exported it from the MyCarrier dashboard and sent it over in about two minutes. Carriers can now see where they are winning and losing business on specific lanes and adjust accordingly, which has led to more accurate rate conversations grounded in real shipment volume instead of estimates.

Faster, error-free BOLs and pickups

Auto-generated PRO numbers and BOLs replaced a manual process that once meant handwriting labels for every pallet on a shipment. Drivers now arrive to pickups that are already labeled and ready to go, cutting the time spent at the dock and eliminating the lost or mislabeled pallets that used to turn up days later with no clear origin.

Certified dimensioning at the dock with Dockware

Dockware replaced the tape measure and handwritten notes with a quick mobile scan. The team weighs and dimensions each pallet, captures a photo, and scans the pick ticket to pull in customer information automatically, removing a common source of address book errors. That data syncs directly into MyCarrier, so there is no second round of manual entry.

Certified dims without the cost of a fixed dimensioner 

Before choosing Dockware, C&S Fasteners considered a traditional fixed-mount dimensioner. In a 15,000 square foot warehouse, dedicating floor space to a stationary unit would have used up roughly three to four percent of the building, space the team estimated would cost more in rent each year than a full year of Dockware. Dockware's NTEP-certified mobile scanning delivers the same certified, legal-for-trade accuracy without requiring a dedicated station, freeing that space for shipping, receiving, or whatever the warehouse needs that day.

Fewer reweighs and reclasses, backed by photos 

Since adopting Dockware, C&S Fasteners has seen far fewer reweigh and reclass disputes. When a carrier does flag a discrepancy, the team can pull up the photo captured at the dock to show exactly what the pallet looked like when it shipped, turning what used to be a drawn-out back and forth into a quick resolution.

Time saved where it adds up 

On days with several shipments going out together, the team estimates saving fifteen to thirty minutes compared to their old manual process, and expects that to scale considerably higher at greater shipment volumes. At roughly a dollar fifty per shipment to use MyCarrier, the labor savings alone made the platform an easy decision.

A Partnership Beyond the Platform

For Jason Adams, Project and Product Manager at C&S Fasteners, the value goes beyond time saved. Real shipment data has made carrier conversations more productive and given the team leverage to negotiate rate adjustments backed by facts instead of guesswork. It has also made MyCarrier and Dockware feel like true partners, working together to streamline the entire shipping process, starting at the dock.