Loop Fresh Produce in McAllen, TX, and Los Angeles-based transportation partner the Allen Lund Co. are celebrating the first anniversary of a successful Rio Grande Valley partnership.

“Last year it was a start-up program. This year we are looking forward to expanding LTL service from Texas destinations and increasing deliveries into the Midwest and Northeast,” Loop Vice President of Business Development John McGuire said. “These are key lanes and we are fortunate to have gained some positive momentum and support from last season’s operations. By combining multiple shipments to a certain region of the country, we are able to save shippers on transportation costs.”

Loop is leveraging its services to save customers freight expense. Since transportation is one of the biggest expenses in the supply chain for the produce industry, Loop has created solutions to help shippers cope with a difficult freight market.

“We are focused on becoming an integrated supply chain solutions provider,” said McGuire. “This means performing more than one service in the supply chain to add value to customers. These services include cooler availability, quality control inspections, custom retail packaging and LTL transportation services. For example, by combining our repack and transportation services we can often save a customer time and transportation costs by doing a private label custom packaging operation for retail from McAllen instead of taking the product to their own facility and then having to reship it a long distance to the final retail customer DC.”

Said McGuire, “Loop provides quality cooler services, quality control, and repack capabilities. Our collaboration and process improvements we are implementing with the Allen Lund Company mean customers have a partner focused on more than a single part of the supply chain, leading to more consistent on-time deliveries.”

Loop packages limes, lemons, onions, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans and more in today’s most popular retail packaging styles.

“I have often seen product shipped back and forth across the country in order to get a product in a specific package SKU. Our services can help alleviate that non-value-added transportation time and expense,” McGuire said. “An added bonus is that it has a positive impact on the environment through reduced CO2 emissions from trucks.”

Loop’s cooler and repack operation are both Primus GFS- and USDA Organic-certified and its Warehouse Management System has online tools to allow customers to track inventory and transactions in real-time.

Demand for the combined Loop-Lund services has increased to the point where a new employee, Juan Garcia, has come aboard to recruit top quality drivers and coordinate outbound loading.

“Juan came to our attention while hauling berries for our program with his four trucks hauling intrastate during last season,” said Scott Fletcher, who manages Lund’s Dallas, office.

“This year he agreed to come to work for us in a full time, working on-site at Loop’s facility coordinating outbound shipments and recruiting quality carriers,” he said.