ProFlex - White Paper – Ashland Conveyor

ProFlex - White Paper

ProFlex Truck-Loading Automation Success Offers Relief for Persistent DC Pain Point

Ashland Conveyor Products partnered with one of the leading E-Commerce  companies in the United States to address  a persistent pain point in their Pennsylvania  Distribution Center’s truck-loading operation. The customer’s objective was to assess the reliability, safety and serviceability  of flexible, extendable powered conveyors  at their outbound  doors.


What began as an introductory site visit evolved  into a full-scale implementation of Ashland's  ProFlex Power Conveyor System —   culminating in a successful pilot installation  at the facility’s highest-volume outbound door.


The results were immediate and well-documented  by the customer’s evaluation team:

• Stronger build quality

• Safer package handling

• Easier maneuverability despite a heavier-duty build

• Dramatically simplified maintenance. 


This white paper documents the scope of the  facility’s flexible-conveyor needs, the technical  integration with the site's existing TREW-brand  cross-dock (IXD) infrastructure, and the specific  product advantages that drove the positive  reception of ProFlex.


White Paper Summary:

The pilot installation validated the ProFlex Power Conveyor System as a strong fit for high-volume cross-dock operations and demonstrated the value of the comb Ashland's partnership — from initial site consultation through engineering, procurement, and installation.

 

“This thing is so sweet and will improve our safety metrics and throughput with less down time because of the guards not catching packages.”

 

Read the full report – click here.

Learn more about how ProFlex can save you time and money on your loading and unstuffing operations. Click here.

Executive Summary: In late 2025, Ashland Conveyor Products partnered with one of the leading e-commerce  companies in the US to address a persistent  pain point in its Pennsylvania distribution  center’s truck-loading operation. The customer’s  objective was to assess the reliability, safety and serviceability of flexible, extendable  powered conveyors at their outbound doors.  What began as an introductory site visit evolved  into a full-scale implementation of Ashland's  ProFlex Power Conveyor System —   culminating in a successful pilot installation  at the facility’s highest-volume outbound door.

 

The results were immediate and well-documented by the customer’s evaluation team: 

• Stronger build quality  

• Safer package handling  

• Easier maneuverability despite a heavier-duty build   

• Dramatically simplified maintenance 

 

This white paper documents the scope of the  facility’s flexible conveyor needs, the technical  integration with the site's existing TREW-brand  cross-dock (IXD) infrastructure, and the specific  product advantages that drove the positive  reception of ProFlex.

 

Scope of Facility's Flexible Conveyor Needs: The trial distribution center is a high-throughput cross-dock facility, and its fconveyor requirements  reflect that scale. The site's material flow depends on flexible, extendable conveyors at both ends of  the building — inbound de-stuff operations and outbound trailer loading — making equipment reliability and safety a facility-wide priority rather than an isolated concern. In total, the facility's flex-conveyor footprint spans 44 individual flexible conveyor applications across inbound  and outbound operations — with the 32 outbound doors alone representing over 3,200 linear feet of  ProFlex conveyor once fully deployed. The pilot installation described in this white paper was the first  step toward that full site-wide rollout.

 

Installation & System Integration: The Ashland installation team came on-site to handle delivery and installation directly, ensuring the ProFlex system was installed correctly with the existing material handling infrastructure. Notably, this installation  required integrating the ProFlex Power Conveyor System with the customer’s existing TREW-brand cross-dock (IXD) system — a non-trivial systems-integration task that the Ashland team executed without disruption to the site's live operation. The pilot unit was installed at the highest-volume outbound door, a deliberate choice by the project team to stress-test the ProFlex system under the site's most demanding real-world conditions before any broader  rollout decision was made.

Performance & Safety Advantages Observed

The customer’s evaluation team, composed of management and engineering personnel, identified the benefits of the ProFlex system almost immediately upon installation. The advantages centered on build quality, operator safety and maintainability — three areas that had been persistent frustrations with the site's prior flexible conveyor equipment.

Build Quality & Durability

•Robust leg weldments: A more rugged frame structure than prior equipment, built for long-term 
durability in high-cycle cross-dock use.
•Superior-quality casters: Higher-grade caster construction improves long-term reliability and ease of movement.
•Easier maneuverability: Despite being a heavier-duty unit overall, the evaluation team specifically noted that the ProFlex unit was easier to maneuver than the equipment it replaced.

Operator Safety

•Enclosed conduit wiring: Cleaner wire management, fully enclosed in conduit, significantly reduces trip hazards for employees working around the conveyor.
•Folding handles: Reduces the likelihood of employees running into the conveyor and sustaining 
bruising or other minor injuries during operation.
•Integrated light bar: Illuminates the dark trailer interior during loading, directly improving visibility-driven safety for employees working inside trucks.
•Skatewheel side guards: Reduces package jams both along conveyor transitions and across the full length of the unit — a direct safety and throughput improvement, since jam clearing is a common source of both downtime and employee injury.

Maintainability

•Patented quick-change roller & belt system: Generated significant enthusiasm from the facility’s  maintenance team, who recognized that rollers and O-rings could now be replaced without  power tools, which eliminates the need for them during routine maintenance and  substantially reducing service time.

Conclusion & Path Forward

The pilot installation validates the ProFlex Power Conveyor System as a strong fit for high-volume  cross-dock operations and demonstrates Ashland’s partnership capabilities — from initial site  consultation through engineering, procurement and installation. With a single high-volume door successfully converted and generating strong feedback from both  operations and maintenance leadership, this facility is evaluating a broader rollout across its  remaining outbound doors and inbound de-stuff connections — a combined scope of 44 flexible  conveyor applications and more than 3,200 linear feet of ProFlex conveyors site-wide. The Ashland installation team remains engaged with the facility team to support this evaluation  and any subsequent phases of deployment.

 

 

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