CUSTOMER STORIES
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Based in Rosedale, British Columbia in Canada, Qualitree sprang to life in 1994 as a small greenhouse operation as the end result of a university horticulture project. Today, Qualitree resembles a Dutch-style nursery, including advanced rail transportation systems, computer-controlled irrigation, and cutting-edge climate control systems. Qualitree covers close to 100 acres of land with approximately 750,000 square feet (almost 17 acres) of greenhouse production area for its propagation and finished plant lines.
For Sales Manager Paul Vaandrager, safely shipping live plants across North America presented some unique challenges that traditional tracking solutions were unable to solve. Their previous GPS tracking system, operating on outdated 3G networks, was becoming increasingly unreliable and had frequent dead zones. “We were getting dead spots—especially in the Midwest,” explains Vaandrager. “We ship across North America, and sometimes we were losing shipment visibility for 16 to 18 hours.”
A lack of visibility is particularly problematic for businesses such as nurseries because they grow and ship time-sensitive, living products—with strict delivery windows that cannot be compromised. “We just can’t afford to have delays,” Vaandrager emphasized. “When you have live products that need to be delivered in three days… and suddenly now it’s going to take six days? That’s a problem.”
After evaluating a few other visibility solutions during 2022, Qualitree chose Tive and started using a Solo 5G tracker on all their shipments. “Tive’s reliable national network played a big part in our choice. The ability to integrate shipment data into our own ERP system was the other critical reason we chose Tive,” says Vaandrager.
With Tive, Qualitree is able to ensure continuous monitoring—regardless of how many different customer orders are on each vehicle. When a shipment is set up in the Tive platform, all relevant customers get an email with a unique tracking link, which provides unprecedented transparency. “Every customer who has products on a specific truck gets a link to the tracker which shows them in real time that their load is on the way. They can track it themselves, and have total peace of mind that everything is going okay,” Vaandrager explains.
The impact of using Tive to improve daily operations was immediate—and transformational. The Qualitree logistics team is now able to monitor all shipments from a single dashboard, eliminating the need for constant phone calls to trucking companies. “You just log into the platform in the morning, see where all your trucks are, and if somebody seems out of place you call the trucking company. But otherwise you don’t bother—because you can see where all your trucks are right away,” Vaandrager says.
This shift from reactive to proactive has produced significant time savings for the Qualitree team, and has also improved accountability with their third-party carriers. The real-time visibility provided an undeniable record of truck movements, eliminating disputes about delivery timelines. “You can’t fake it if you’re actually watching shipments move in the platform,” Vaandrager explains. “Once you put a tracker on a shipment, they can say anything they want—but it doesn’t matter. If you see that Tive tracker moving or not moving, that’s every indication you need that your load’s going to get delivered on time.”
Qualitree’s customers love the real-time tracking the company now provides, particularly those who cross-dock products and need precise timing for their operations. Many receive plants, mix them with their own products, load them onto smaller trucks, and distribute them directly to stores—a process requiring careful coordination. “They need to time that out perfectly because they’re actually not a greenhouse facility. They can’t take the plants and set them down,” Vaandrager explains.
The tracking capability has also fundamentally changed customer communications, reducing inquiries to the sales team and empowering customers with self-service visibility. “Our Sales team really enjoys using Tive because it reduces the number of customers reaching out to ask where their cargo is—because they can see it in the platform themselves,” says Vaandrager. This modern approach creates a consistent, premium experience, regardless of order size.
In the three years since they started using Tive, Qualitree has tracked more than 1,600 shipments with remarkable results. Despite shipping live, perishable plants across varying climates and distances, they’ve experienced very few claims since they started using Tive. “1,600 loads have included a Tive tracker, and we have had only two temperature claims in total,” Vaandrager reports.
The success has been so significant that Vaandrager actively recommends Tive to industry colleagues, including direct competitors. “I can and do suggest Tive to direct competitors. It just makes sense to use Tive because it is low cost—and provides high value,” says Vaandrager. Tive provides an effective way to safeguard high-value shipments at every step of the journey.
