Shipping Disputes
Went Near Zero.
The Late Nights, Too.
How Hammer Haag Steel went from spreadsheets and 2 AM scrambles to a system that proves every part, every truck, every time — built in weeks, not months.
In Part One, we introduced Hammer Haag Steel — a thriving custom fab shop that had built something worth protecting. Their leaders knew the systems holding it all together had hit their limit. They chose Yolm and a new path: stop searching for off-the-shelf answers and start building software around the way they actually work. This is what happened next.
30 Trucks a Week.
Tracked With a Pen.
Hammer Haag Steel ships about 30 trucks a week. On busy days, eight trucks load at the same time. Each one carries dozens — sometimes hundreds — of heavy steel parts. Every part has a mark number. The numbers differ by a single digit. At this volume, getting it right isn’t optional. It’s the whole job.
Until Phase Zero, it was all done by hand. Typed BOLs. Pen-checked spreadsheets. Photos taken on a personal phone and filed by hand. When a truck pulled out of the yard, the paperwork was only as good as the person who built it under pressure — often late at night.
The team that built HHS into what it is today did it with exactly these tools — and did it well. But a company growing this fast eventually needs a system that can grow with it.
Their Growth Wasn’t Capped by Talent. It Was Capped by Paperwork.
When a customer called to say a part was missing, HHS had no proof. They had two options: send staff to a job site hours away, or remake the part on their own dime. Most of the time, it was the latter. It was a line item tracked at every morning meeting.
On heavy shipping days, the paperwork wrap-up happened hours after the last truck left. Photos ended up in the wrong folders. BOLs went out late. Quantities were off. Those mistakes landed on business development as customer complaints. Some of those customers didn’t come back.
HHS leadership saw all of it. The structural steel industry is growing fast — pushed by infrastructure spending and big commercial projects. The pipeline is there. The skill is there. What a system built on spreadsheets and phone photos can’t do is keep up with it.
Old Way. New Way.
Side by Side.
Every Problem
That Used to Hurt?
- Missing photo uploadsgone.
- BOLs not matching truck loadsgone.
- Untraceable part photosgone.
- Wrong photos sent to wrong customersgone.
- Late-night paperwork before a 9 AM truckgone.
- Lost or misfiled job sheetsgone.
- Disputes with no proof to back HHS upgone.
- Remake costs from unverifiable claimsgone.
- Customer complaints to business developmentgone.
Every Part Scanned.
Every Truck Proven. Every Time.
Every part leaves QC with a full-ID QR label. Loading is a scan-and-match process — no hand-typing.
Every part that comes through quality control gets a tough QR code label. The label carries the part’s full ID: project, mark number, job name, PO, description, and weight.
When loading a truck, the shipping clerk scans each part with a mobile app. The app walks them through every step. It takes photos along the way. And it won’t let a part go onto the wrong truck.
A Bill of Lading is built for every truck. It’s tied to the scanned parts and photos. Three people sign off on it electronically before it prints. When the truck leaves, an auto-email goes to the customer with everything attached — before the driver clears the yard.
Rework from shipping disputes: near zero. Customer complaints: stopped. Business development, which used to field shipping calls almost daily, has had zero complaints since rollout.
For the shipping team, the late nights are over. For customers, it means certainty. They know what shipped. They see what it looked like. They know exactly where the paperwork lives. That kind of trust brings them back, job after job.
Trust Lost. Trust Rebuilt.
HHS’s most complex active job — a huge project with a major design and engineering customer, thousands of steel parts across many shipments — tested the system early.
The first two shipments after go-live had scanning errors. The client was rightly upset. They sent a rep to watch loading in person. The Shipping Program Manager spent a full day with every team member until the process was right.
Zero mis-scanned parts since training was finished.
The client’s rep stopped showing up. The client’s own emails now talk about how reliable and accurate every shipment is. That kind of trust is hard to win back once you’ve lost it. The system made it possible.
At This Scale, Pen-and-Paper Isn’t Slow. It’s Risky.
Hammer Haag ships about 30 trucks a week. A single job section can hold over 1,000 parts. The biggest jobs run past 10,000 parts. Parts range from a few pounds to several thousand pounds. Mark numbers differ by a single digit across thousands of pieces. Miss a customer cutoff, and you’re paying for an overnight truck hold.
Phase Zero ended that risk. What’s left is a shipping operation that can take on any job HHS lands — and document it fully, accurately, and automatically.
From Blank Page to Live System. In Weeks.
When Hammer Haag Steel decided they needed a better way to ship, they weren’t going to wait a year. They needed it built right and built fast. Yolm delivered both.
From the first workflow map to a working system live on the HHS floor, the build moved at a pace the team had never seen from a software partner. The system wasn’t cut down to ship faster — it was complete: mobile app, back-office dashboard, auto-generated paperwork, real-time customer tracking, and built-in error blocks at every step.
That speed is no accident. The work was built on the Business-Defined System — one system definition for the data, mobile flow, back-office UI, paperwork automation and customer tracking. Instead of stitching separate tools together, the team could build around the shipping workflow itself.
What’s Next for HHS
Phase Zero proved the model. Now the same approach moves forward.
Target October
For HHS, this isn’t a tech project. It’s what the next chapter of the company runs on.
for Fabricators.