Harris Teeter · 3 US DCs, mapped from satellite
The Yard Network System, by FreightRoll.
Kroger is moving fulfillment back to stores. Your yards carry the load. YardFlow is the network layer that runs them.
Kroger is closing automated e-commerce centers and shifting fulfillment to stores and third parties to win back $400 million in 2026 profit. That sends more freight through the same physical network, the DCs and the gates Harris Teeter already runs. More volume, the same yards. You run a compact, tightly held network. Three DCs across two North Carolina campuses, Indian Trail near Charlotte and Greensboro, about 90 miles apart. You feed grocery, perishable, and frozen to 250 plus stores across seven states. You are the rare grocer that fences and checks every yard. So control is not the gap. The gap is that each gate runs its own way, on paper and radios.
YardFlow is the Yard Network System, the software layer between your TMS and your WMS. When the fulfillment plan leans harder on stores and the DCs that feed them, the gate becomes the choke point. One standard across all three is what lets the network absorb the load. Primo Brands has implemented the driver journey system wide, cut trailer turn times by 50%, and shipped about 5% more volume on the same dock-office headcount. The audit shows where the same gain sits in your network.
- The gapYour TMS runs the road, your WMS runs the building, nothing runs the yards.
- What we doOne digital standard for all sites. EZ-Pass at the gate, air-traffic control for the trailers.
- The proofPrimo: about 5% more volume on flat headcount, turns cut 48 to 24, and 100% of the network committed.
- The payoffReduce turn times, gain 5% capacity per location. Eliminate paper and detention expenses. No change to headcount.
Already live at scale · the Primo Brands network
The Yard Network System runs the yards behind these household brands. Live today, rolling to 100% of the network.
Using actual results from Primo Brands, we modeled the potential prize for Harris Teeter.
Proven at Primo, modeled across the network
The problem
Every gate "does it their own way." That is not strategy. That is drift.
Ask two of your DCs and we would expect the same line: our yards are different.
In our experience they are not. Same trucks, same trailers, same moves. What differs is the workaround each site improvised, hardened into a process nobody chose. At Indian Trail near Charlotte, your perishable and dry-grocery DCs share one fenced campus and one guarded gate. Every trailer for both buildings funnels through a single check-in. Greensboro runs its own gate, its own remote check-in, its own quirks. Three gates, three playbooks, no shared view. As Kroger pushes fulfillment back onto stores and the DCs that feed them, each of those hand-run gates takes on more loads it never planned for. Drift that was tolerable at todays volume becomes the bottleneck at tomorrows. You gate every yard, which is rare. The control is there. The standard is not.
Why now
Kroger just moved the volume back to the stores and DCs. Your yards are now the cap on what the network can move.
Kroger is shutting automated e-commerce centers and routing more fulfillment through stores and third parties to chase $400 million in 2026 profit.
That volume does not vanish. It lands on the physical network, the DCs and gates Harris Teeter already runs. You can ask a DC to ship ten percent more. It ships nothing if the yard cannot turn ten percent more trucks. Your yards are the cap on what your network can move. For the first time in four years, pricing power is swinging to carriers as capacity tightens. The next spot market will punish shippers whose yards burn a drivers afternoon. Detention starts at hour two and runs $50 to $100 an hour, and carriers now pick their shippers. Fix the gates and the capacity you could not see starts to surface, which is more loads out the same doors. For perishable and frozen the clock is unforgiving. A reefer your yards lose today is shrink this week.
The Yard Network System
A new layer of your stack, between the TMS and the WMS.
Every yard runs the same jobs, and the same people run them. The Yard Network System gives each of them one standard across every site. The driver checks in from their phone with flowDRIVER. The spotter moves the trailer while a cab camera maps the yard with flowTWIN. The dock coordinator assigns the door from flowYMS. The dock office signs the BOL with flowBOL. The executive watches every yard on flowNETWORK. Under all of it, machine vision reads the truck at the gate and an agent dispatches the next move. Think EZ-Pass at the gate and air-traffic control for your trailers.
The proof · already at scale
No company had ever put its whole yard network on one system. Primo just did.
The point is not faster trucks. It is realized production capacity: 5% more volume out the door on the same headcount, capacity those plants could not ship before.
Primo started with one layer: the driver journey. Text the truck instead of checking it in. Paper out of the gate. No more driver-to-dock-office handoff. Across the 24 sites where it went live, those yards shipped about 5% more volume than the sites without it, on the same dock-office headcount. That alone is why Primo committed all ~260 sites to the full Yard Network System, the first national shipper to standardize every yard on one protocol. The YMS is rolling now. Live at 10 plants, every production site by the end of Q3. The highest-volume campus is going fully automated end to end, on a trailer map that updates itself in real time. The 5% came from the lightest touch. The rest is still ahead. Harris Teeter already gates every yard, which is the hard part. One protocol across all three is the part still ahead.
“Your software enabled us to take on additional volume while remaining headcount neutral in the dock office. That was an integral part of our strategy, and it has been proven.”
Result measured on the driver-journey layer, before the YMS rollout. Primo is live at 10 plants today, every production site by the end of Q3.
What it touches
A new layer, not a new migration.
YardFlow runs in the yard and talks to the systems you already have. Your TMS and WMS stay the systems of record. Nobody is ripping anything out.
Built for enterprise infosec review. We connect over your standard API or EDI and scope to yard operations, not your ERP of record. Full integration and security review happen in the audit.
- In the yardflowDRIVER (driver app, no install) and flowGATE (camera gate) run on YardFlow. Nothing changes on the dock floor.
- ReadsYour TMS appointments, over standard API or EDI.
- WritesGate and turn events back to your WMS, so dock and inventory stay current.
- IT liftOne connection per system. No rip-and-replace, no platform migration.
Your own audit
This is Harris Teeter's own audit, not a generic benchmark. We mapped all 3 DCs from satellite. Here is what the handoffs cost today, and where the standard lands first.
- 3 of 3
- Already run drop yardswhere the 48 to 24 minute drop-and-hook win lands
- 3 of 3
- Gated with a guard or boothflowGATE automates the check-in step
- 3 of 3
- Long entry drives where queues buildpre-arrival check-in keeps the queue off the road
See all 3 sitesOpen the audit →We are not asking for a pilot. We are asking for a conversation.
A 30-minute call, direct with Casey. We show you what we found on your network, you tell us straight where it fits. We will not tell you which site to start at. We have only seen your yards from orbit. You run them, so you already know which one goes first. If the call goes well, we talk about where that is. If the call does not land, you keep the analysis.
None of these times work? Email me at casey@freightroll.com or call or text me at 410-236-7434, and we’ll find one.
Casey Larkin, YardFlow. Jake, our founder, joins when it helps.
