A.N. Deringer knows what stops a shipment. It is rarely the truck.

A shipment of Canadian hay arrives in Vermont. Someone grades it, sorts it, and puts it back on a train. The destination is France; the ultimate customer is a horse. This was the trade handled by the warehouse operation from which A.N. Deringer emerged in 1919. Before international logistics acquired dashboards and acronyms, it had the quite reasonable problem of feeding cavalry.

A century later, the goods have changed. The awkward middle remains. A product can be manufactured perfectly and transported efficiently, then encounter a document, classification, or inspection that nobody properly anticipated. Deringer works in that middle, where an apparently small administrative detail can rearrange an entire delivery schedule.

The hay was only the beginning

Alfred Neel Deringer bought portions of his employer’s business. He and former colleagues Herbert Schultz and John Hurley signed the new company’s incorporation documents on August 1, 1919. Its warehouse could accommodate 200 railcars. The business already understood something valuable: goods crossing a border needed handling, judgment, and people familiar with the route.

Each subsequent expansion followed another practical complication. Customs brokerage joined the offering. In 1930, Deringer amended its articles to operate an insurance agency and procure customs bonds. A forwarding license followed in 1976; meat inspection in Champlain, New York, began in 1988. These were neighboring problems, gathered into one business.

Today, Deringer reports more than a million customs entries annually and roughly 30 U.S. service locations. Its overseas partner network supports international freight. Retailers, manufacturers, and food businesses need this combination; company-published testimonials include L.L.Bean and Cargill. The appeal is coordination: clearing, moving, storing, and distributing goods through connected services.

The customer wanted to look for themselves

The revealing episode came around the 2008 downturn. Deringer’s warehouses used three software packages, separate servers, and an inadequate interface for electronic data exchange. Customers were changing their expectations. They wanted access to information without asking someone else to retrieve it. Personal service had acquired a new requirement: sometimes the customer preferred no conversation at all.

“Customers want to see everything as quickly as possible, on their own.”

Andrew White, Deringer marketing analyst, historical warehouse case study

Deringer turned that demand into a purchasing process. It created a functionality matrix across twelve categories, invited eight software vendors, and narrowed the field to four. Warehouse workers and managers helped evaluate the finalists. The company chose Manhattan SCALE and began a rollout in May 2009.

The difficult adjustment was organizational. Independent warehouses were becoming part of a shared environment; one person’s actions could affect everyone else. The historical case study describes ten warehouses implemented in twelve months, with radio-frequency workflows replacing a paper-based warehouse system. Customers received training before their warehouses went live.

Those figures measure something more useful than a successful installation. Customers actually used the system. Deringer also gained transaction data it could use in carrier negotiations. Better visibility improved what customers could see and what the company could know.

The same preference for reducing repetitive work appears in Deringer’s 2015 invoice and eManifest integration. Common information could carry from an invoice into a U.S. manifest, while a return trip could reuse details for Canadian filing. The point was practical: enter recurring information fewer times, with fewer opportunities to introduce another error into the shipment record.

The price lives in the handoffs

Deringer sells logistics services through tailored quotations. The buyer is purchasing a combination of movement, clearance, handling, and expertise. Its eShipPartner tools add customs analytics, shipment tracking, imaged documents, and inventory access. The software makes the service easier to inspect, which is a sensible arrangement when the service itself involves so much invisible work.

The historical cross-dock offering shows the economics. A customer prepared and labeled shipments; Deringer collected them, took them to the border, cleared customs, and forwarded them through U.S. domestic carriers. The customer paid a line-haul fee to reach Deringer’s facility, then domestic delivery rates. The potential saving came from changing the route and rate structure.

For a buyer, the useful calculation includes every leg. Consolidation makes sense when the downstream savings cover collection, line-haul, and handling. Small volumes or awkward destinations can undo the arithmetic. A handsome dashboard does not improve an uneconomic route.

A cleared truck can still have unfinished business

Deringer operates meat-inspection facilities with on-site USDA inspectors in Champlain and Sweet Grass, Montana. It coordinates labeling and documentation and tracks shipments after customs clearance. That final detail matters. Clearance and presentation for inspection are separate steps; completing the first does not complete the second.

This helps explain its place among alternatives such as Livingston International, Expeditors, and other brokers and forwarders. Deringer’s pitch combines personal attention with connected operations and compliance expertise. A customer should test that promise against its particular commodity, trade lane, and required integrations. The breadth of a service menu matters only when the relevant pieces work together.

Expertise also requires maintenance. Deringer’s careers materials describe financial support for licenses and certifications, tuition reimbursement, and professional development. In April 2026, its customs affairs and compliance director, Amy Magnus, received the industry association NCBFAA’s Centurion Award. Customs knowledge is a working capability here, with people responsible for keeping it current.

The company’s customer education extends to video tutorials and trade updates. Its January 2025 Trade Remedy Tool announcement described calculations for existing duties and possible rate changes. These tools give an importer something concrete to discuss with its broker: how a different assumption affects the shipment’s economics, before the goods are already on their way.

Borrow the buying process

The copyable idea is Deringer’s method of choosing and introducing change. Start with the information customers need. Write down the requirements. Include the people doing the work. Train customers before switching their systems. Accept that shared software requires shared habits; otherwise, the old fragmentation simply receives a new login.

For an importer considering Deringer, bring shipment volumes, origins, destinations, commodity details, and existing systems to the quotation discussion. Ask how exceptions will be handled and who follows the shipment after clearance. The horse in France needed hay. Every modern customer, beneath the elaborate machinery of trade, still needs the goods to arrive.