Customer

Dot Foods is the largest food industry redistributor in North America, specializing in consolidating products from hundreds of food manufacturers and delivering them to distributors in less-than-truckload (LTL) quantities. Founded in 1960 as a family-owned business, Dot has grown into a logistics powerhouse with a broad network of distribution centers across the United States and Canada.

Opportunity

Dot Foods, North America’s largest food industry redistributor, wanted to address some common issues impacting their freight movement productivity.

With over 1,500 suppliers, Dot Foods has to manage a large variability in freight, carriers, and product storage needs, all while maintaining tight delivery schedules and high quality service.

“At Dot Foods, the pursuit of innovation has been a driving force since day one. Technology adoption is one of the key focus areas where we need to prioritize experimentation to understand how new tech can give us a competitive advantage in the supply chain industry.”

– Troy Schenk, Dot Foods
Director of Automation

A solution was needed to streamline dock operations and improve efficiency while providing data insights. One that could manage the variability of loading and unloading freight from trailers while also increasing the safety of operations and reporting.

The goal is to improve operational consistency, throughput, and service levels, especially when the workload fluctuates.

Solution

A focused deployment of the TREY Medium-Duty AMR forklift as an autonomous solution for trailer loading & unloading.

GIDEON dashboard data was used to measure and validate the trailer-to-staging workflows on freight. Its live data providing day-to-day performance in a real dock environment without changing upstream systems.

Tasks were quickly dispatched and monitored in the GIDEON Fleet Manager system – with no integration of the customer’s WMS required at this stage.

Showing that focused deployments create a practical understanding for scaling automation. Start with 1 or 2 doors, prove the gains, and expand to additional docks and sites without rethinking the whole operation.

Results

Due to the advanced autonomy of the TREY forklift, manual touches to freight at the dock were reduced significantly. This lowers the risk of worker injury and cuts risk to product damage—protecting both people and inventory.

Throughput became steadier and more predictable, resulting in a tighter, more reliable dock-to-stock rhythm that’s less vulnerable to costly call outs, especially on second and third shifts.

Skilled operators were freed up for higher-value tasks like inventory control, put-away optimization, and exception handling—work that benefits from human judgment rather than repetitive trailer loading and unloading.

Financially, automation of the loading dock aligns with the industry’s push for investments that pays back quickly. For Dot Foods, the ROI potential using the TREY Medium Duty forklift is shown in under 24 months—clearly supporting business cases that emphasize speed to value.

Dot Foods has signed an LOI for the purchase of multiple TREY Medium Duty Autonomous Forklifts for use in their distribution system.

“We partnered with Gideon to implement a solution for automating trailer (un)loading. We were unsure if the solutions available could meet our operational expectations while handling our process variability. Gideon was transparent with their capabilities and how they relate to our operations. They were beyond diligent when it came to understanding our process. Productivity and reliability are paramount when adopting automation, and Gideon delivers both.”

– Troy Schenk, Dot Foods
Director of Automation