Rising fuel. Driver shortage. Unilever achieved 98% utilization — and lower costs and emissions at the same time.

Unilever Case Study: AutoO2 Load Building Software by ProvisionAi

Unilever is a Fortune 500 consumer packaged goods manufacturer shipping hundreds of loads daily across a global network. Giovanni Dal Bon, Head of Logistics North America at Unilever, co-presented with Tom Moore of ProvisionAi at CSCMP Edge 2021 in the session "Meshing Deployment Planning and Execution — Unilever's Path to Contain Costs." The presentation covered how Unilever used AutoO2 to achieve 98% truck utilization while simultaneously cutting freight costs and Scope 3 carbon emissions.

The Problem: A Compounding Utilization Gap at Scale

Unilever's deployment costs represent more than 30% of total supply chain costs. Trucks running at 90–95% utilization across hundreds of daily shipments left a persistent gap — extra trucks, extra miles, extra fuel, extra CO2, every day. Rising fuel costs, a global driver shortage, and a hard net-zero deadline made closing this gap a strategic priority. The challenge was not finding new carriers or renegotiating rates — it was maximizing the payload already available in every load leaving the dock, while working within real-world constraints on equipment, space, staffing, and carrier capacity across Customer Service, Transportation, and Planning stakeholders who often had conflicting goals.

The Solution: AutoO2 Load Building Software

ProvisionAi deployed AutoO2 across Unilever's network. AutoO2 ingests every item's dimensions, weight, stacking constraints, and customer requirements from planning and ERP systems, then simultaneously solves axle weight distribution, cube utilization, damage risk, and stacking rules in a single pass — producing the maximum legal payload on every trailer automatically. Visual load instructions are delivered on screen to warehouse floor loaders, removing expertise dependency entirely and ensuring every load is built correctly on every shift.

The Key Insight: Efficiency and Sustainability Are the Same Gain

The critical insight Unilever demonstrated at CSCMP is that freight cost reduction and Scope 3 emissions reduction are not competing goals — they are the same operational improvement. Every load AutoO2 packs more tightly is one fewer truck on the road: fewer miles driven, less fuel burned, less CO2 emitted, and lower freight cost simultaneously. There is no trade-off between the P&L target and the sustainability target when the lever is payload optimization.

The Results

Unilever achieved 98% truck utilization — up from a 90–95% baseline — representing millions of dollars in annual freight savings across hundreds of daily shipments, meaningful progress toward net-zero logistics targets, and reduction of Scope 3 transportation emissions. Across its full client base, ProvisionAi eliminates 88,000 trucks per year and reduces 285,000 tons of CO2 annually through truckload optimization.

Why This Matters for Other Shippers

Any large CPG shipper facing the same combination of rising fuel costs, driver scarcity, and sustainability commitments can achieve the same result. The utilization gap — the difference between what trucks currently carry and what they could legally carry — is the highest-ROI lever available. AutoO2 closes that gap on every load, automatically, without replacing existing TMS, WMS, or ERP systems.

About AutoO2

AutoO2 is ProvisionAi's load building software for truckload optimization. It connects to ERP and WMS systems to pull order data and generate optimized load plans automatically. Typical ROI is within 90 days. No TMS or WMS replacement required.