Resources › Autonomous Dispatch and Routing • Jun 3rd 2026

Case Study: Second Harvest Cut Fuel Costs 20% — and Got 40 Hours Back Every Week

Download

How one food bank replaced spreadsheets and guesswork with real-time visibility across every route, pickup, and grocery rescue stop.

For Brandon, Transportation Manager at Second Harvest Food Bank, Fridays used to look like this: his data analyst Alan spending four to six hours manually pulling route data from their old system — two data points at a time, store by store, driver by driver — just to understand what had happened that week.

“It turned almost a 40-hour-a-week job,” Brandon said. “Into a push-button: where are the misses, this is what was collected.”

That’s the before. Here’s the after:

20% Reduction in miles traveled and fuel consumption
~2 hrs Earlier average delivery time per route
40 hrs/week Reclaimed for strategic work by eliminating manual data processing

From Spreadsheets to Real-Time Visibility

Second Harvest runs a complex operation: city deliveries, agency drops, and grocery rescue pickups across major retailers like Kroger, Walmart, and Publix — each with its own poundage tracking, accountability requirements, and time windows.

Before Wise Systems, missed pickups sometimes weren’t caught for a day or two. Dispatchers managed by phone. Driver location was anyone’s guess. And every dollar in inefficiency had a direct cost: fewer meals reaching people who needed them.

With Wise Systems, the team now has an eye in the sky. Dispatchers can see every driver in real-time, redistribute stops mid-route when things shift, and catch potential misses before they become problems.

“Having the availability to see it at 20,000 feet,” Brandon said, “hey, Charles is only halfway through his stores — we can take three stops off him and put them on Ron.”

Every Dollar Saved Is a Meal Delivered

For mission-driven organizations, efficiency isn’t just an operational goal — it’s a direct line to impact. Second Harvest’s 20% fuel reduction came at a critical time: as fuel prices spiked, the savings helped absorb costs that would have otherwise cut into the food bank’s capacity to serve.

Deliveries now arrive, on average, two hours earlier. Inbound complaint calls from grocery partners dropped by an estimated 60–70%. And Alan — whose Fridays once disappeared into data extraction — now has time to build the kind of reporting that helps leadership make real decisions.

A Partner, Not Just a Platform

Brandon is direct about what sets Wise Systems apart from every other vendor he’s worked with: the relationship.

“Your ability to serve — I call it service after the sale — is amazing. Most of the time in this industry, it doesn’t feel like that’s the trend. But you guys are doing that, which I think is severely, severely needed.”

From zero unplanned downtime to weekly check-ins with his dedicated customer success manager, Second Harvest has experienced the kind of partnership that makes a new system actually stick — even with veteran rural route drivers who’d been doing things the same way for 25 years.

Download the case study in the form to the right to learn more.

See the full story — the challenge, the process, and the results.

Second Harvest is one of a growing number of food banks using Wise Systems to optimize routes, reduce costs, and serve more people with the same resources. Learn how Second Harvest Food Bank reduced fuel use by 20%, cut delivery times by two hours, and reclaimed 40 hours of staff time per week with Wise Systems route optimization by reading the case study.