2022 Shipper of Choice profile: Kimberly-Clark

The Shipper of Choice award, presented by FreightWaves in partnership with TriumphPay, recognizes the manufacturers, distributors and retailers that do the best job of keeping the American economy moving by fighting driver detention, providing accessible facilities and understanding what it takes to remove inefficiencies from the supply chain.

Among the top 25 Shippers of Choice for 2022 is Kimberly-Clark. 

Why Kimberly-Clark is a desirable freight customer

Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) is one of the largest consumer product goods companies. A quarter of the world’s population uses Kimberly-Clark brands, such as Huggies, Kleenex, Scott, Kotex, Cottonelle, Depend, Pull-Ups, GoodNites, Intimus and Viva. 

The paper-products manufacturer exports a large amount of products by ocean. It uses FourKites’ visibility technology so it can keep track of ocean shipments managed by freight forwarders and respond to interruptions in real time. 

To further minimize delays and be more resilient, Kimberly-Clark is adopting more digital logistics processes. It is extending the approach of using digital platforms for monitoring in-transit shipments within its own domestic network to ocean freight, where there are long lead times. It is also making planning systems capable of accepting more information from suppliers further up the supply chain. That means understanding suppliers’ production schedules and logistics plans and when they can get containers loaded on vessels. 

The company is also reinventing its supply chain, including positioning inventory closer to the point of demand, to meet new e-commerce expectations.

Kimberly-Clark scored well as a Shipper of Choice because of the huge volumes it ships, knowledge of issues confronting motor carrier partners, operational flexibility to help motor carriers increase efficiency and having multiple origins for freight pickup. Respondents said the company also had a good selection of driver-friendly freight.