How Fastenal Helps Speed Up Pilgrim's Progress

How Fastenal helps speed up Pilgrim's progress

June 6, 2025
By the Blue Print Editorial Team

Building a leaner supply chain meant bringing Fastenal home to roost.

When chicken is the end product, you could say the supply chain starts with an egg. But it certainly doesn’t end there, especially for a poultry processing operation the size of Pilgrim’s in Moorefield, West Virginia. It takes thousands of tools and parts to keep equipment running. It takes a steady flow of sanitation supplies to clean the facilities every night. And it takes a huge daily supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) to safeguard their 1,800-plus team members.

None of this would be especially challenging – except for one thing. Pilgrim’s Moorefield is two hours away from … well, pretty much anything. It has to be that way. Responsibly raising enough chickens to supply fast-food chains and grocery delis throughout the northeast U.S. requires a sprawling ecosystem of growers.

When everything (other than chickens) is far away, it creates supply chain challenges. Matt Nelson, Maintenance Manager for Pilgrim’s Moorefield, put it this way: “If we order something next day, we are not getting it next day – it is always two days. So, our priority here – and it's been an opportunity in the 20-plus years that I've been here – has been the remote location and having supplies available.”

For years, Fastenal had been taking care of their MRO supply needs – fasteners, pipe fittings, tools, electrical supplies, etc. – but the nearest branch was 50 miles away in Cumberland, Maryland. So, twice a week, Fastenal service representative Terry Wegman would have to make a two-and-half-hour roundtrip trek to check and restock their inventory.

No one would call it a model of efficiency (especially Terry), but it worked well enough for MRO items. The real issue was safety supplies – the head-to-toe PPE items Pilgrim’s team members cycle through several times per day. These critical products were provided by a remote supplier, which forced some tough decisions. It was tricky to manage the daily volumes, and they absolutely could not risk running out. So, they opted to carry extra inventory.

How much are we talking about?

“On the PPE side, we would have to order six weeks in advance and store that on-site here in the building,” said Matt Nelson. “So, we had a huge room packed full of inventory that we would have to order to maintain our volumes here, just due to the remote location.”

Hatching a plan

Terry talked to Matt about the idea of having Fastenal move on-site to stock and manage their inventory needs. For Pilgrim’s, the upside was obvious. A short supply chain would mean less cash and floor space tied up in inventory. A dedicated service team would mean less work and stress for Pilgrim’s personnel.

There was enough interest to pull in Chris Presutti, Customer Solutions Consultant for Fastenal.

“They were really looking at what type of program we had to lower their inventory dollars,” said Presutti. “So, when we came in and did our site analysis, we found we could solve a lot of the issues they were having by providing an Onsite program and having people here five days a week to stock and manage their MRO supplies, which eventually expanded to include PPE.”

Breathing new life into dead space

Every business has one: a “storage purgatory” where things gather dust for untold years before finally being thrown away. Pilgrim’s was no exception. Known as the Bean Building, it had become a way station for unwanted office furniture and fixtures. It also happened to be right across the street from the main campus facility – a perfect spot to stage and prep supplies.

Pilgrim’s cleared it out, cleaned it up, and brightened it up with new LED lighting. From there, Fastenal installed industrial pallet racking and filled the shelves with around $150,000 worth of tightly-managed inventory – from hoses, air filters, and absorbents to boots, hairnets, caps, and gloves. After years of long lead times and high overhead, the stage was set for a more efficient process.

Getting in tune and building trust

Today, the building serves as a supply hub for the entire campus. A Fastenal straight truck makes daily deliveries to maintain proper inventory levels in the warehouse. There’s always someone pulling and prepping products. And every day, several employees make their rounds across the campus, which includes a hatchery, feed mill, truck shop, prepared foods facility, and fresh production facility.

“We have four employees – two full-timers and two part-timers – providing over 100 hours of labor for Pilgrim’s Monday through Friday,” said Fastenal’s Anthony Carter, who oversees the team. “Every day, we’re speaking with leadership across the plant, making sure their needs are understood and met. We’re also taking care of our managed inventory locations, whether they’re manual bin stocks or vending machines we’ve deployed throughout the campus. Our job is to make sure those min-max levels are maintained while also pushing to achieve inventory reduction for the customer.”

For Chris Presutti, this daily engagement is the difference-maker. “We've become very in tune with exactly what their needs are. So, if there's an emergency that pops up or something that happens, we're able to respond quickly because we can understand and read the situation pretty well. With the communication we’ve established, it seems like they've really found a partner in us that they can trust.”

"We live by two things, which is show up when you say you're going to show up and do what you say you're going to do. Usually if you do those two things, then you're in the customer's good graces"

- Chris Presutti, Fastenal Customer Solutions Consultant

Dispensing supplies. Capturing data.

The onsite building isn't the only way Fastenal brings products closer to Pilgrim's. They’ve deployed industrial vending machines in all campus buildings to provide employees with round-the-clock access to tools and supplies.

“One of the biggest advantages is products are stocked in the machines by our Fastenal reps and we're able to track who uses what,” said Matt Nelson. “For example, we can see Employee A is using five cans of spray a week compared to Employee B who’s using one can of spray. Then we can go back and see if that's the proper amount. It could be that Employee A is using too much, maybe Employee B isn’t using enough. But it gives us a lot of traceability, plus the convenience of not having to hand that out in the parts room and try to track it individually.”

"Now we're saving loads of time"

Previously, two Pilgrim’s employees (with other roles in the business) were spending between 14 and 25 hours a week receiving, sorting, moving, and putting away supplies. Now, the Fastenal team takes care of the entire process. Meanwhile, the just-in-time inventory program has allowed Pilgrim’s to clear out two large areas of the plant that used to be filled with inventory. That square footage is now available for productive use.

“Now we're saving loads of time, loads of man hours,” said Pilgrim’s Procurement Specialist, George Welling. “We’re not having two or three people going through the product, hauling it into the supply room to put it up on the shelves. Fastenal comes in and puts it up for us. Our overhead cost went way down, and that’s what we were looking for.”

This brings us back to Matt Nelson, the person who saw the vision and helped put it into motion.

“We previously discussed that we were having to hold six weeks of inventory,” said Nelson. “Now all of that's readily available. We don't have folks worrying about when the order got placed, when it’s going to show up – we used to spend a lot of time tracking and so forth. Fastenal has been able to relieve all that stress off of us and keep our inventory off-site but close enough to where we can control our daily volumes and still have enough that if something comes up, they can get it pretty quick for us.”

His final word on the impact of the partnership?

"It's been positive from everybody who's participated in it."

Meet the crew

Matt Nelson
Maintenance Manager (Pilgrim's)

George Welling
Procurement Specialist (Pilgrim's)

Chris Presutti
Customer Solutions Consultant (Fastenal)

Anthony Carter
Onsite Development Specialist (Fastenal)

Andrew Trub
Onsite Account Representative (Fastenal)

One final nugget

Watch the video to see the solutions in action and hear directly from Matt and George. If this story sparks ideas you'd like to explore for your own business, reach out to your Fastenal representative to get crackin'!