EP 598: Cutting Transportation Costs with Paccurate
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The New Warehouse Podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin. Hey guys, it's Kevin and I'm here at ProMat 2025 and I am in the Packer booth. I'm going to be joined by, of course...

CEO and co-founder James Malley of Pacurate. And we're going to talk a little bit about Pacurate. More specifically, we're going to talk about kind of this slew of partnerships that they've been doing and what that means for their customers, how that takes Pacurate and their solution to the next level and how it helps to impact that end consumer more. So, James, first off, thanks for letting me come to your booth. Absolutely. Thanks for coming.

Definitely. It's always a pleasure to see you. Always good to catch up with you at these conferences and in between, whether it's randomly on the street in New York City like earlier this year. But it's always great to catch up and learn what's the latest with you guys. So maybe for people that aren't familiar, just give us kind of a quick, brief overview of Packard. Sure.

Packurit is a packing intelligence platform. It's a little buzzwordy, but basically what it means is we use software to help optimize packaging and software to help optimize packing.

Right. And a big part of that is the cartonization, right? So we had a cartonization algorithm 11 years ago that we just made kind of as a side hustle because we had some shipper clients that were getting hammered on dimensional weight fees. And so we never thought it could be like its own company. We were just like, let's just build this thing. We'll make a slick algorithm and it won't change our lives that much.

But then four years ago, pandemic hits. This is suddenly a crisis. We happen to be there with this solution. And so really kind of parlayed the growth from that into building out a broader platform of tools. Yeah, absolutely. And it's been really interesting to see you guys continue to grow and start seeing the Pack Your Name everywhere. And I think when people think about

you know, that cardinization and optimizing at the PAC station, PACuret's name is typically in that conversation, right? But now, you know, recently we've seen that you guys have, you had PACHealth that came out, right, which we talked about at Manifest together a little bit. But now you're also kind of going through these partnerships as well. And I think, you know, most recently you announced a partnership with Cardex, SBT Robotics, thank you.

who's Cardex right behind us conveniently, right? And pretty damn quick, I think I saw too. And I think you're announcing here at the show another partnership with Logiwar, right? So, I guess tell us a little bit about what does the partnership mean for Acurate? And then we'll talk a little bit about each one kind of individually and what that does. Yeah. Well, for us, partnerships are really everything. Okay. For a couple of reasons.

One, the biggest friction point with any API-driven product is obviously integration. So a company may say, wow, Pacurit, your stuff is great. This ROI looks insane. We checked it out. It's real. Only thing is my IT team has like a two-year roadmap. So call us back. We're so excited. And so when we first started, we would call it phase two-itis, where

oh, this is going to be part of phase two. And then it just never happened. So once we started partnering with specifically WMS companies, like best-in-class WMS providers, then if you can have a turnkey solution, you don't need to spend as long on

proving the value. You can just say, just turn it on and measure it. And so from our standpoint, it just makes it easier for our customers to get up and going. But I think some of the other partners you mentioned, cartonization has like, it kind of sits in between a lot of other concerns. And so there's applicability with

ASRS process design, you know, pack size is a great partner because there's heavy applicability with on-demand packaging. And cartonization is often a small prerequisite to really delivering exceptional ROI for those solutions. But it's a really down-the-rabbit-hole kind of problem. So if we can partner and kind of insert ourselves into that

piece of the problem, it makes for a great upside for both companies.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really interesting that you touched on that because that's certainly something I experienced in my career when I was in the warehouse. It's like, oh, we have this solution we found. It's going to have all this benefit. And IT's like, ah, we can't deal with that right now, right? And so I think, you know, naturally what you're saying is kind of like packaging Packer almost together with some of these other solutions that, you know, are more...

maybe there's more awareness around in a sense, right? It's an easy way to kind of get that in and get those people to realize the benefit and kind of see it, right? Yeah. Yeah, and there are cases where we can, just by putting our stuff, which is kind of lightweight relative to a lot of other of these, you know, kind of hardcore automation solutions. If we can help in the beginning with the business case, with shortening that, you know, payback period, right?

That's really everything. It's like this is the time to put it in is when you're using it to justify a bigger improvement. Yeah, absolutely. I think that makes a lot of sense and the latest going to be here announced is Logiba, right? So that kind of ties into what you talked about, about some of those best-in-class WMSs and

and how to roll that out with that. But I'm curious about the partnership with Kardex and how that kind of comes together and where does that come into play with some of Kardex's solutions? Sure. So as you know, Kardex AutoStore is a prominent auto store implementer.

And they've, I think, become known for kind of like pushing the boundaries with what they do on the periphery, kind of adjacencies to the actual system that they install.

And so this is just one of those points where what happens right after the goods come out of the auto store? You need to figure out how to pack. And so if you can say, not only will I speed up your picking by X amount, but I'll lower your transportation costs at the same time without trying too hard if I can bring Packer again at the same time. So like I said before, it's really that business case. If we can be part of a...

a balanced breakfast. That's kind of the approach. - A balanced warehouse breakfast, right? - Yes, exactly, with your Wheaties. - Interesting, and you touched on there too, being able to lower that transportation cost as well. So I mean there's one side of the argument where you're looking at this carbonization, and certainly you're reducing the amount of corrugated or cardboard you're using, or maybe packing material in general.

But tell us about how does that extend beyond the four walls into that transportation? Sure. Making, I mean, transportation savings is like, I don't know, 70% of the savings of doing something like what we have. Yeah. Packaging is important and...

I was just talking to somebody about this, but packaging used to be just kind of the cost of doing business. Right. But now it's become much more important, especially as shareholders want you to use greener materials. And you're like, fine, but is that on my budget as an operations person? Yeah, yeah. Sounds expensive. And they're like, yes, it is. So using only the packaging you need is important for cost and for sustainability.

But when you can bring in a kind of goods to person solution of any kind, whether it's ASRS or otherwise, and say, oh, by the way,

I'm going to take a big bite out of the transportation cost, which is the biggest cost that any shipper has. So the way we kind of figured out that doing advanced cartonization like this or having a platform like this, it'll save you pretty much the same amount of money in total as an AMR system with none of the risk, basically. Yeah.

Interesting, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's very interesting to think about that because the dividends kind of downstream continue to pay off in a sense, right? If you think about, you know, that transportation area, because really you're taking a lot of that air out of the package, right? And you're

you're shipping a lot less of that void space essentially, which can be huge savings over time. So tell us a little bit about, I'd love to hear on that side, because obviously there's the packaging side, which we talked about here, but on the transportation side, I'd love to hear some of maybe the biggest impact you've seen on the transportation side. So for transportation savings, the rule of thumb is,

the lower volume you are, the higher percentage you'll save. So I think the most we've seen is like 20% saved on transportation. So that's for, you know, a small brand. As you get bigger and bigger and bigger and you're in the top like 100 shippers, you might be only dealing with like 4% savings on transportation, but the dollar amount associated with that is obviously quite large. Yeah.

especially relative to something that is so lightweight. So that's kind of what we see. I think the average transportation savings is around 6% if they're coming from kind of a last-generation cartonization to ours, which is more modern.

And that tends to be the reason that people, there's two reasons people come in hot and heavy, ready to implement. Transportation savings. The other one is the CEO called. They saw a viral TikTok post of a badly packed box. And it's terrible for their brand and they're demanding it gets fixed immediately. Yeah, absolutely. You'd be surprised how many cartonization emergencies. Yeah.

Cardinization emergency. Pick up the pack you're at hotline, right? Yeah, exactly. The red phone. Yeah, I think it's such an interesting thing because it does like the consumer... Consumer has such a voice now, right? I mean, they had a voice before, but now their voice is like amplified. Whether they...

have a big audience or not a big audience like that type of thing right can catch the ceo's attention it can be out there and now so everybody's like oh they're not very sustainable or they they don't do this or they don't do that i think it's it's interesting to hear that like you have that cardinization emergency as you said and you know how you know that catches the attention for looking for a solution like this do you do you have a big gen z audience

Do we have a big Gen Z audience? My students are all Gen Z. Okay. Well, they might be interested to know, and maybe they can relate, that Gen Z is the first generation that will actually make changes to their buying behavior if they perceive a brand to be wasteful.

I'm like an elder millennial. I get a badly packed box. I just kind of whine about it. But they actually will not, potentially, high likelihood of them not buying from you again. So that's a problem for something that previously...

They may have just thought the cost of doing business ran out of boxes or DIMMs were bad. Now you're going to get churn. So Gen Z is driving some change there. Interesting, yeah. I think it's really interesting, too, because I think the velocity at which they consume as well is much higher, right? Because they're used to now all these fast fashion, low cost, quick thing, they're viral, I'm going to get it, and then...

I'm over in three weeks and I get something else, right? So I mean that has such a wider amplification as well. It's very interesting that you pointed that out there. So really interesting stuff with you here, James, and really appreciate you having me come to the booth. But if we look here, we're at ProMat, right? It's day one as we're recording this. But what do you think is some of the kind of buzz here, especially around carbonization and that packing area?

Yeah, I'm not a robotics person, but I am a fan. So this is my favorite show of the year because I just stand there, kind of drool, coming out and watch all the crazy stuff. I think related to cartonization, I'm kind of fascinated in general with ASRS systems, trying to hook up to on-demand packaging machines and navigating all the gotchas of trying to do something like that. So...

I think our partnership with Cardex comes at the perfect time that that's something shippers are flirting with. Interesting, interesting, definitely. And we'll definitely be checking out some of those solutions here as well, but it's great to catch up with you, James, and learn more about what's going on in the latest with Packure. If people want to learn more about Packure, what's the best way to do that? Well,

If they're here, wait, when does this come out? Later? Yeah, it's going to be later. All right. Well, you can't come to our booth because this is later. But you can go to packerit.io and everything about Packerit is there.

All right, definitely. So thanks to James for allowing me to come to his booth and recording with us and giving us the latest on Packerit and some of those great partnerships and also how to save some money not only on packaging but also on your brand awareness as well and then on the transportation side too. So really appreciate it, James, and hope you have a good rest of the show. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

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